


What happened to Allison

by Skyisamystery



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sparrow Academy (Umbrella Academy), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Babyfic, Crack, Five's Uniform, Gen, Mpreg, Number Five | The Boy ages, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Post Season 2, The Umbrella Academy Canon Divergence, Time Travel, graphic birth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 45,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27084382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyisamystery/pseuds/Skyisamystery
Summary: It was supposed to be an easy job for Five and Allison. Just a simple time jump,  to avvert the assasination of a future president. Although,  the mission does not go quite according to plan and Five wakes up alone, twenty years into the future. But, what happened to Allison?
Comments: 20
Kudos: 63





	1. Never an easy ride with Five

**Author's Note:**

> This story was supposed to be a little oneshot, to help me get rid of a little writer's itch. As I write this it has turned into a monster of a fic, 60 pages long and counting. 
> 
> The story is set after season 2, and mainly in the year 2023. Although, with Five being a little timegremlin (thank you Tumblr) he will skip about some during the story. Ben is still dead dead, and the Sparrow Academy has been dealt with somwhere before 2021 as a "wrong timeline" and won't be a part of this story. Five, physically, will be 17 in this story, and about 62 years of brainy experience. (I've read somewhere Five doesn't physically age after he returns to 2019, but in my story he is allowed to grow)
> 
> I have never read the comics and therefore have no inkling as of what will unfold for the Hargreeves Family in the future. 
> 
> English is not my native language, so expect curious language hiccups along the way as it is not betaed in any way.
> 
> Oh, and if babyfic or mpreg with heavy angst is not your cup of tea, then run, run for the hills! 
> 
> Still hanging on? Then I hope you enjoy the story.
> 
> \- Skyisamystery

”I heard a rumour…” Five felt his body recoil as his flesh and mind were warped beyond his imagination. A wave of blue, the sensation of hot blood rushing through his head as he was spat through time and space several decades in the wrong direction.. The nauseating sensation of spinning beyond control, and the thud as his body hit cold, wet concrete. Then, thankfully, he passed out.

Regretfully he regained consciousness a few hours later, drenched and frozen to the bone and with an all too familiar stench in his nostrils. It couldn’t be.. 

They had been trapped in an ambush, all ways of escape promptly shut off as they ran further and further into the trap. And there they were, number three and number five, trapped in a dodgy timeline with no way of going home. Five tried, oh boy he tried. Waves of blue shimmering around him as he tried and tried and tried to muster enough power to send him and his sister safely through time and space, back to the right timeline, back to their family, back to 2023. He already was drenched in sweat and adrenaline when finally it dawned on him to his horror, that all he could do in his current state was a very unstable and risky one man's trip. That wasn’t an option. He was not leaving his sister!

“I.. I.. I`m too tired!” he confessed, eyes wide as reality hit his ego like a sledgehammer, as Allison grabbed on to him as to dear life.. She had that look in her eyes, that begging look Five had seen too many times in his job as an assassin. She didn’t know it, but that look of terror worked almost as well as her skill. She didn’t have to rumour Five as long as she was able to make eye contact. She had a look of raw desperation on her, the kind only a mother desperate to go home to her child could muster. A heartfelt desperation so strong that it would have Five willingly sacrifice his life for hers if he could guarantee her safe passage home. If he could have sent just her, he would. But he was part of the equation, and so was the factor of mass. Their combined bodyweight simply were too heavy for Five to jump in his current state. The nagging matter of a gunshot wound in his left shoulder didn’t help the matter further..

“Shit!” Spots were starting to multiply in front of his eyes, and Allison became a blurry presence with a sharp desperation painting her words.

“Claire..” she whimpered.

“You`re too big, too heavy for me to carry with me..I’m.. to exhausted..” He half expected her to slap him in the face for that comment. Instead she flabbergasted him with the following words: 

“If you need me to be small, I’ll be small!” And from there on the shit really hit the fan.

The smell, oh how he loathed the smell. It was like the eau de cologne of 45 years of loneliness overwhelmed his senses within seconds and he cried out his frustration, his horror and his rage while he tumbled to his feet with fear pouring out of his mind and body as he opened his eyes and saw. 

He was back in the future. Back in the hellhole he spent 30 years with Delores as his sole companion, and with the crumbling ruins of the world as his home. 

“Allison!” his cries soon dried out as parched lips realized Allison wasn’t there. What had she said in that final moment before he vanished in blue? I heard a rumour.. Five couldn’t remember, and wasn’t even sure he had even caught the words as he was ripped through the fabric of time.. Her spell had sent his tattered body through time and space, in spite of his exhaustion, in spite of him fighting her with every fiber in his being. Something was really really off with the whole situation, and something felt very wrong, without Five being able to pin down exactly what. And here he was, alone, with no Allison in sight and 20 years too far into the future. He slowly realised his body was aching, hurting even, and not only by his gunshot wound.

_________

The day Five and Allison went missing the rest of the Hargreeves siblings simply shrugged their shoulders and waited for them to return by nightfall. Five’s skills within time jumping had grown considerably the last couple of years and this now ought to be a simple jump for him, just a swift trip forwards a couple of years to fix a dodgy timeline in which a future president was to be assassinated, and then back again. He even brought RedBull to rehydrate and super caffeinate, all to keep his stamina top notch for the return. Although Five no longer dared dally with time travel further than a couple of years or so back and forth, he was still freaking awesome at what he did. 

By nightfall, though, Luther was slowly realising that once more they might have underestimated Five’s ever present skill of making a total mess out of things. All in good intent of course.

Two weeks later Five finally reappeared, surfing a Briefcase from their former enemy the Commission, tumbling down from nothing in the main kitchen with the grace of a small elephant. Diego was out, patrolling the streets like a good little vigilante and missed the hoopla. Klaus literally shit his pants and excused himself promptly, while Luther and Vanya pounced on their tiniest brother like he was some kind of wounded animal.

“FIVE, where the hell have you been?!” Luther yelled, in both euphoria and anger, and then added, with a fearful undertone: “And where’s Allison?” Five, too preoccupied with being unconscious at the moment , curtly declined to answer.

“Oh my god, Luther, look at him!” Vanya groaned as they both took in the sight of their brother’s limp body. Five, though battered and bruised, still looked like his old self from chin up, the old man trapped in a teenaged body. But his posture had changed dramatically. He looked like..

“Why is he fat?!” Luther asked incredulously. He now sported that look he usually had on his face when he wasn’t able to add up two and two. There, sprawled out on the kitchen floor in front of them Five paraded a ridiculously engorged stomach. Luther poked Five’s distended gut with a trembling index finger and recoiled by the touch.

“It’s like a hardboiled egg,” he mused and winced. 

Five’s clothes were ragged and torn, his infamous sweater vest looking like it was one harsh tear away from unraveling completely. His breathing came in harsh gasps as if he was having trouble forcing air down into his lungs. And that gut.. Had he somehow merged with a beach ball on the way home?

Luther was the one that picked his brother’s limp body up like a beloved rag doll, and carried him up to his room where he placed him in bed as he’d be the frailest china cup. Vanya gingerly removed all parts of clothing she was certain Five would be comfortable with her removing before swaddling him like an infant in the softest of blankets. Klaus haltingly joined them in Five’s bedroom after a bottle of bourbon and they all sat down to keep watch over their brother through the night. When Diego slinked in through the door by morning all three siblings were fast asleep by Five’s bedside, but Five was no longer in bed. 

Diego scrunched his nose suspiciously, smelling the stench formerly known as Five that was still lingering in the room and headed for the nearest bathroom. And as guessed, there was the unmistakable noise of running water and Five’s awful humming.Why Five was humming while taking a shower was a mystery as old as time. Why he kept on humming when being obviously tone deaf was an even greater mystery. The water was shut off, and Diego heard the awkward clattering of Five clambering out of the bathtub, followed by the soft swooshing of flannel. When the sound of Five drying himself off subsided Diego decided he had waited long enough and all but kicked down the door to give old Fivey a good old startle. 

“Miss, me you old fa..” he started, jaw falling as he had one eyefull of Five’s dramatically changed body and fell silent, looking like a very odd, glaring statue. Five on the other hand looked like he was about to have a heart attack, and was suddenly trying to make the poor little towel cover more body than it ever had encountered in its short flannely life. 

“Diego, you DICK!” he shrieked and yanked the showercurtains down with one fierce tug. He then draped it over his body like some kind of strange futuristic plastic toga and glared back at his gaping brother..

“What the fuck, Five, your... hair is really..long!” Diego pathetically diverted and tried not to look where he wanted to look.What the fuck was up with Five?!

“Well, I’ve been away for almost eight months in apocalypse land, not many hairdressers over there,” Five replied dryly and almost looked like he was taking the bate. But Diego’s eyes betrayed him and darted downwards.. 

“Hey, eyes up here, Mister!” Five growled, jolting his chin upwards.

“Five?” Diego asked helplessly: “What hell happened to your dick?” 

Five had that look where he was probably groaning three internally “SHIT’s” before looking at Diego incredulously.

“I have grown a stomach the size of a halloween pumpkin, how the hell did you notice my dick was missing?!” Diego realised there were no good answers to that question. Any answer would potentially release a flood of new dick- related questions he was uneasy answering.

“So, been having the munchies lately?” he detracted, nodding towards Fives protruding midsection. “The supermarket wasn’t blown to smithereens this time in the apocalypse?” 

Rubbing his temples very tiredly with the hand not currently holding the showercurtain toga in place Five sighed:

“Diego... It’s been some really long months for me on a steady diet of cockroach tapas and mud flavored smoothies. I need some rest, some food, and some sleep. I will explain it all tomorrow, ok?”

“Sure,” Diego patted his shoulder brotherly: “It’s good to have you back, Five” Five let out a silent sigh of relief until the oaf that was Diego opened his mouth again: 

“Where’s Allison?” Five gave his brother the one stare that would silence anyone, and left the bathroom.

_________

The next morning the Hargreeves siblings found Five in the main kitchen, eating a marshmallow and strawberry jam sandwich. He was dressed, awkwardly, in a way too small pajamas.

“Luther,” he exclaimed as his siblings came creeping up on him: “I need to borrow one of your old school uniforms.” 

Luther frowned. 

“What is it with you and those old rags?!” he pondered. 

“I missed them when I grew up alone in a post apocalyptic world, and I like the texture,” Five simply replied. 

“Fine,” Luther sighed: “But why borrow one of mine, what about your own uniforms?”

“They don’t fit me anymore. And since you’ve always been the biggest of us, I need to borrow one of your old ones.” 

Luther looked mortified.

“I was never THAT big!” he whined, receiving a silencing elbow in his ribs, courtesy Vanya. 

“I’ll go fetch you one,” she told Five quietly. 

“Thanks sis,” Five replied, sipping his coffee.

After drinking his coffee, and changing into one of Luther’s old uniforms (it was a tight fit), Five gathered his sister and brothers in the library for some explaining time. They sat around him, anxious looks on their faces, and he silently wondered how batshit crazy they would believe he was after telling them his predicament. “Well, here goes nothing,” he thought, and opened his mouth.


	2. What's the matter with Five?

He was back then, in apocalypse land, in a time that never happened for anyone but him. Allison was nowhere to be found. And to Five’s horror his downstairs area seemed to have been transformed beyond recognition. Where had his dick gone, and was that a shiny new vagina hiding between his thighs??

F.U.C.K!

Life back in the apocalypse soon enough got into routine for Five, unfortunately. Always keep moving, constantly keeping track of where his old future self was located at the time being. Five wasn’t too keen on running into himself. Paradox psychosis wasn’t a trip he wanted to try again. He was working on the equation to get himself safely back home, making tired notes in an old notebook he’d found in some ruins. He wanted Vanya’s book back as it had worked almost like a safety blanket for him the last time he was trapped here, but he was afraid to mess with the timeline if he fetched the book intended for his earlier self. He didn’t dare to make a jump through decades on a whim in his current state, and doubted he would even succeed in making a jump of mere seconds. Truth to be told he felt terrible, every bone and nerve in his body aching and acting up on him. And all the time one thought was gnawing at his brain, distracting him from his calculations: where was Allison?

It was thanks to a fever fueled dream six months later he finally realized what had happened to his sister. As a result he awoke in a cold sweat, tossed to his side, and promptly puked his guts out. In the dream Allison had repeated the words she’d uttered the second before they were flung into the vortex of time and space:

“I heard a rumour, I could get so tiny I could travel together with you, inside you.” And suddenly it all snapped into place.

The morning routine of vomiting until he was on the verge of passing out, his gut suddenly starting to expand instead of diminishing, the weird feeling of something (someone!), tumbling inside him, the sudden urge to urinate every few minutes (a task that suddenly was a chore now that he had to find a spot and crouch down instead of just whipping it out and have a go wherever), and finally the frickin girly bits he was currently sporting.. Five used all of his curse words and kicked everything within reach, before he promptly sat his ass down on the ground and bawled his eyes out. He was getting too old for this shit!

So Five was in fact not alone in the future. He was, somehow, in the family way, and that with his sister growing inside him nonetheless.

Why it took him so long to figure out this particular predicament? Well… Being trapped in a distant apocalyptic future that never happened within a virgin teenage body raging with hormones, and hosting the mind and experience of a 62 years old man didn’t help him figure it out. The fact that there were no more hospitals or doctors didn't help neither, nor did the simple fact that it should be humanly impossible for him to become actually fucking pregnant in the first place!

When he started puking his guts out in the mornings he figured it simply was a bad reaction to the cockroaches he ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.. The dizzyspells and aches and pains he experienced all over his body he reckoned came from the gunshot wound in his shoulder that festered and bothered him for longer than he was willing to admit. And when his gut started to expand- Simple vitamin D- deficiency, he’d seen the heartwrenching pictures from television campaigns gathering money for starving children. When he started to feel movements from the inside of his stomach he simply slapped his forehead and figured, yes, of course he would get tapeworms as well. Just perfect.

The newly grown vagina and sudden disappearance of his penis and testes was a harder to explain conundrum, though... But Five didn't bother too much with the grander details. Something had probably gone horribly wrong when he jumped, maybe his and Allison’s genetics got jumbled up in the mix and somewhere in time Allison was now walking around, sporting Five’s junk, forever cursing him as she wondered where the hell her vagina had gone.

A tensed up jaw was the only visible sign to the internal battle raging on inside him. Five put the palm of his hand gingerly towards flesh stretched out like a drum and poked the skin. He was immediately answered with a fierce shove back. With a harsh inhale he removed his hand with the same speed as someone stung by a bee. This was too much, even for him.

With such precious cargo aboard, Five decided he couldn't risk jumping again by himself, even if he was to get in a better physical state. He needed a suitcase. Thankfully he knew where the Commission's old headquarters was, and just maybe there would be one left that had survived the apocalypse.

After eight weeks of travelling by foot, puking his miserable guts out on the way Five stood on the very ruins of the Commission's old headquarters. Long since gone, only some barely standing ruins were left. Now it was just a curious hiccup, an appendix of never happened, stuck in time and space as a dead end, only because Five had spent 40 years there, growing up alone..

As he stood in the doorway Five closed his eyes and silently held his breath. There wasn’t much left of the old hitman’s stance and posture as his shadow awkwardly rose on the wall opposite him and he went inside. A weird almost cartoony figure was painted on the wall for a brief second. Framed was a shadow of a very tired young man, looking for a way home. It was this or nothing, his hail Mary. If all the briefcases turned out to be destroyed he saw no way back. And the thought of somehow giving birth to and taking care of his infant sister alone in this hellhole scared the living daylight out of him. That was a definitive nope!

He made his way through crumbly dark corridors lit by the scarce light from an oil lantern, and finally he found what had once been the office’s beating heart, the Suitcase Room. It looked like a bomb had gone off in there, dust covering the poor remains of what had once been the pride of the Commission. Five’s heart plummeted down into his stomach as he entered the ruins. Nothing could have survived the blast that had gone off inside this room. He searched through the office with a fierce determination that was further fueled by desperation as he slowly made it through old cabinets. Finally, under heavy layers of dust and debris he actually found one. A long forgotten suitcase that looked intact. Five swallowed, perspiration streaming down his back as he flicked the main switch and waited for the tiny battery indicator light to flash into life. When the light indeed flashed green moments later Five's vision grew blurred and he found it hard to breathe as something welled up inside his chest. As a former hitman, Five wasn't a man basking in mushy moments or feelings, but he figured he could allow it this once.

"We're going home, Allison," he croaked into the silence, feeling something flutter back beneath his skin.

His fingers trembled so hard he was about to lock the suitcase to 1823 as he was jotting in the coordinates. Five grabbed the suitcase firmly between both hands as he shut his eyes and felt the mechanics inside the trunk zip into life. This was it, they were going home! He felt the all too familiar jerk behind his bellybutton, the crazy sensation of getting cotton stuffed into his brain and off they went into the blue.

They were going home to their family, and home to a million questions.


	3. Five needs a break.

He had opened his mouth, ready to tell his siblings about his impossible situation. But no words escaped his lips. A cold sweat appeared on his brow and his eyes started darting around in the room as a lump started growing in his throat. He couldn’t stand looking back into the anxious faces of his siblings. He wasn’t able to calculate which words would best ease the coming blow to them as a family, and how to word the total and inevitable humiliation of himself. He watched Luther’s lips starting to open, and before he knew it Five had blinked out of the library and found his feet on the pavement outside the mansion.

“Later, I’ll tell them later,” Five told himself and scattered off towards the nearest place he’d feel safe and in peace for a little while.

Griddy’s Donuts. It was a wonder someone had taken pity in the old place and opened it back up. The coffee shop looked identical to the rundown joint Grace had shut down four years earlier, complete with the new addition of old cobwebs. Five throdded through the doors on heavy feet, clambering up on one of the barstools by the counter with the grace of a small hippo. He was never getting used to this new and cumbersome frame of a body. His physique and constitution should be at their peak, his physical age considered, but all he felt was frail and weak. And overstuffed, like a christmas turkey.

A blonde waitress, complete with baby pink outfit scooted over to him, casting him a look as she took him all in. Five relished in her disgust.

“So, what should it be? The doughnut family pack, extra large?” she smirked, squinting at him with the typical stuffed attitude you would find with every twenty year old these days.

“Just a coffee thanks, black,” Five answered, smirking back. He was too old to get offended by this child. 

An elderly woman appeared out of nothing and sat down beside him by the counter, just as Five adjusted his back and growled in discomfort. 

“You alright there, dear?” the little lady asked him, even having the audacity to pat him on the wrist. Five almost fell off the barstool. How the hell had that little lady managed to sneak up on him?! In the meantime the snotty waitress was back with Five’s coffee. She put the cup down in front of him in a careless manner that made the contents splatter around dangerously and then turned her attention to the old lady.

“What’ll it be, Marna?” she asked her, her tone much friendlier now. Her positive attention to the new customer told Five this old lady was a regular at Griddy’s and not an assassin out to kill him. Always paranoid.. He allowed himself to relax just a little, making the twinge in his lower back return. This time he remained silent. Marna on the other hand seemed to be having ninja malaise detecting skills.

“You alright, dear?” she asked him again, now with her wrinkly eyes looking at him, face beaming with motherly tenderness. The waitress rolled her eyes and started flicking her pencil impatiently. Five swallowed the urge to give her a good glare, and turned his attention politely towards the elderly lady:

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“Are you sure, you look a little peaky.” 

Five, to his horror, realised this woman was about to pat his cheek. 

“I'm just fine, madam,” he repeated as he flinched away from her hand, and tried on a soft smile for good measure.The smile only seemed to enhance the lady’s doubts though. Five growled inwardly, slapped himself theatrically on the gut and exclaimed:

“Oh, you mean THIS old thing?!” Both the old lady and the waitress jumped a little.

“This is a sympathy pregnancy suit I’m wearing for school. Isn’t it hilarious?! They make all the guys in our class wear fake preggie bellies for a whole week, apparently to prevent teenage pregnancies. It’s the stupidest thing ever, right?!” He reckoned a little youthful banter would seal his poor attempt at explaining why he was lobbing around with a potbelly the size of Luther’s bicep. The waitress looked like she was about to throw up a little, but the little old lady was his; hook, line and sinker.

“Wow, I had no idea what you teenage boys have to go through in sex education nowadays,” Marna exclaimed: “Good on you!” she cheered and patted his shoulder. Five smirked inwardly and basked in his well earned bullshit points. 

“Lyra, dear. Won’t you pop out back and fetch us a couple of pieces of your best pie?” Marna, the lovable little old lady, told the waitress.

“Yeah, that would be so nice of you, Lyra,” Five contributed with a big toothful smile. Lyra the waitress sulked off with a poorly hidden scowl. Five couldn’t hide his amusement. 

“You know what’s the absolute most cumbersome with this belly?” he asked Marna cheekily as he watched Lyra’s rapidly diminishing backside.

“What’s that dear?” Marna chirped motherly. Five awkwardly jumped off the bar stool.

“It’s all the trips to the toilet,” he confided and stretched his back.

“Watch my coffee, will you? I wouldn’t want Lyra to put roofies in my drink.” He winked at Marna who was practically cooing back.

“Sure, dearie!”

Five hauled ass over to the toilets where he more or less had to back into a bathroom stall. He flicked the lock shut, cursing as he saw the dirty toilet seat. Men were pigs! He was growing rapidly aware over said fact as he now had to sit down while peeing like everybody not equipped with a penis. He missed his..

He gingerly wiped the seat and prudently sat down. Although grateful for the fact that he was able to use a toilet again it felt like a tiring exercise. All he wanted to right now was to find a comfortable position and sleep for a decade or two. But last night hadn’t been the parade of good dreamless sleep he’d dreamt of while being stuck in the future. The gut got in the way no matter how he rolled around in bed trying to find a comfortable position.

Five’s nerves suddenly snapped into overload, hairs in his back suddenly strutting with attention. There had been a little squeal from the cafeteria, Five guessed the sound had come from Lyra the appalling waitress.The sound had been cut short, like someone had cut her vocal cords before she had managed to get her squeal into a full pitched scream. Five clambered silently out of the toilet stall, hitching his shorts back on, full assassin mode turned on as he krept towards the door, not noticing the toilet paper currently stuck under his left shoe.. As he was about to open the door slowly his ears caught wind of a second voice, a soft sobbing voice that had to be the old lady’s.

Marna! 

Five clenched his fists in frustration. If that room was now filled with Commission agents he wouldn’t stand a chance. He would manage a couple of blinks and then he’d be out of fuel. And he had Allison to consider. Then he heard Marna beg, not for her life, but for his:

“Please, he’s just a child, leave the boy be!” and then- one muffled gunshot, and silence.

Anger, red hot boiling fury lit up in his mind like a fuse, and before Five had taken any odds to consideration he blinked into action with a growling snear. Four heavily armed men jumped backwards as Five suddenly appeared in the room with a terrifying snarl. He sprung into action with no more than a pen, stabbing the throat of the first man who was standing beside Marna’s dead body. He blinked out just as the other three started shooting, and luckily enough two of them shot each other. But his luck was promptly run out as he was spat out behind the counter, losing his footing and tumbled over, hitting the floor, hard. He groaned as the impact ran through his body like a tidal wave, and he felt something shift inside him as he tried to catch his breath. The fourth guy was heading towards him like a speed train, and all the cursing in the world wouldn’t give Five the fuel he needed to blink his way out of this one.

Shit! 

“What do.. you guys want?” he coughed, trying to buy some time in a feeble attempt at cooking up an escapeway. The man on the other side of the counter stopped, cautiously.

“The briefcase,” he answered. Five slapped his head. The Briefcase! How could he have been so stupid?! Of course the Commission would be wanting that back! Although the Handler was long since dead there still were protocols. 

“I.. can.. get you.. the briefcase,” Five panted, slowly rising from behind the counter, one arm in the air, steadying himself on the edge as he slowly got to his feet. He had no way to escape, he had to count on a possibility to parlay his way out. The man currently aiming his semi automatic weapon against him was a rugged military guy, probably a hired goon, a temp. Temps were dangerous, unpredictable, lethal. And this one had a dangerous smirk on him.

“I can.. take you.. to the.. briefcase,” Five breathed, clutching his chest. God damn he felt awful! The room started spinning and the armed man suddenly multiplied by two. 

“Actually,” said the armed man, I already have the briefcase. But second on my to do list is your corpse.” The sound of the weapon exploded in Five’s head like a thousand sparkling lights, and a sudden pain in his chest clutched a hold on his lungs like a vice. Five felt himself toppling over on the ground, the roof spinning faster and faster as his vision grew more and more blurred. But as he drifted out into the black only one thought lingered inside Five’s mind. If the Commission already had the suitcase, what had happened to his siblings?!


	4. An outing for the Hargreeves

When the four hired Commission goons hit the Hargreeves Mansion they found it completely abandoned. The Hargreeves siblings were currently trailing the city looking for Five, their lousy excuse for a brother.

“If we find him I’ll kill him myself!” Diego growled. They were all stuffed inside his Chevrolet Caprice, with him behind the wheel. Luther and Klaus growled in unison from the backseat. They were all on their last nerve with their brother. Why was it always so much goddamn drama with him?

“Everybody think, where would he go?” Vanya’s steady and small voice was the only substance keeping the Hargreeves boys’ temper somehow contained at the moment. 

“He spent a lot of time in the library when we were kids,” Luther mused: “Maybe he went there."

“Let’s go!” Diego wheezed and stepped on the accelerator. Little did they know that in that precise moment four deadly men were currently jumping up and down like giddy little school girls back at the mansion. They had found the briefcase, perfectly innocently standing in the hallway. Of course they had smelled a rat, and made sure there were enough bullet holes in the walls behind it to call it swiss cheese afterwards. And after safely retrieving the package they promptly sat the place on fire and left.

Thirty minutes later the siblings left the library without any signs of Five. Driving around at random was frustrating, but better than doing nothing. Five had been a mess when he disappeared, so they were anxious to get him back home, so they could scold him for disappearing AGAIN! It was when they passed the old Griddy’s donut shop Klaus howled for them to stop the car. 

“Look!” they’ve reopened Griddys! My belly’s tumblin, can’t we stop and eat while we plan our next move?!”

“GrRIDDY’s!” Diego howled, “Of course! That’s where the little shitbag’s hiding! Don’t you remember us going here all the time when we were kids?!” He parked the car on the sidewalk like a stunt driver, and they all clattered out of the car as they were exiting a clown car in the cirkus. That’s when they all heard a gunshot roll like thunder through the cafeteria walls.

“Fuck!” Diego pushed past both Klaus and Luther and ran inside. He was graced with the sight of Five’s body dropping out of sight from behind the counter, and the big broad back of an assassin standing over him aiming for another shot.

The blade left his hand like liquid steel and pierced the attacker’s skull before he even knew Diego had entered the building. The tall man went down like a ton of bricks, dead before he hit the ground. Diego was already halfway through the room, jumping over the body of what looked like a lovely old lady (perfect match for Five), and he passed the corpse of a waitress with a slit throat. He counted three more assassins scattered around the room, also dead, and gave silent qudos to Five. At least he put up a hell of a fight.

As he rounded the corner Diego found Five’s limp body sprawled out on the floor, blood gushing out of him in alarming manner.

“Fucking hell,” he growled as he hurried over to him and feverishly searched for the source of the blood. There, a gunshot wound in his chest, just missing his heart, but probably piercing one of his lungs. Luther added pressure to the wound and yelled for his siblings to hurry the fuck up.They were already there, he simply hadn’t noticed them. Vanya sat down on her knees, softly stroking Five’s hair. She looked around for a moment, then addressed Luther:

“Luther, I need you to find some cling film and duct tape,” she told him, her eyes stern and focused.

“Why?” Looked at her with puzzlement.

“Listen to the rattling noise from his chest,” Vanya told him calmly: “I think the bullet pierced his lung. The lung will collapse if we don’t stop air from drawing into his chest.” Luther scrambled around in panic for a few moments until he found what he was looking for. Vanya grabbed the roll out of his hands and started working, efficiently and silently. 

“Turn him over, I need to see his back,” she told Diego moments later. Diego flipped his brother over to his side, the movement making Five cough and heave. Vanya examined Five’s back swiftly. No exit wound.

“The bullet’s probably still inside him,” she determined: “Diego can you keep him in recovery position until we’re ready to move him?” blood had now started to seep down his chin from the corner of his mouth. She turned towards Diego and Luther:

“We need to get him home,” she told them silently. 

“But mom’s long gone and we’re no doctors!” Diego argued. 

“We can’t bring him to the hospital,”Vanya told them calmly, “It would raise too many questions. Does any of you know of any black market doctors? Diego, I bet you’ve had a couple of brushes with the “under the radar medics during your time as a city vigilante.” 

Diego started to set up an offended face, realised who was he kidding and confessed.

“Yeah, I might know a guy or two..”

“Uhm, guys?” Klaus suddenly chirped in. The others had almost forgotten his presence, as usual.

” Isn’t this the briefcase Five had with him when he dropped last night?”

Luther and Diego looked at each other and silmustaniousely went:

“FUCK!”

From there on it all went in a hurried haze. Luther carried Five to the car, where Allison and Klaus functioned as some kind of makeshift bed for him in the back seat. Diego threw the briefcase into the trunk, and got behind the wheel, while Luther was fighting to squeeze his body into the front seat next to him. He was so broad over the shoulders that he was leaning heavily over to Diego's side. Diego tossed his phone into the backseat as he turned the car into the street on screeching tires.

“Klaus! Flip through my contacts and find “The Doctor”. Call him up, and when he answers say the following words: Red Canari!”

“But I’m having kind of a space issue here!” Klaus squealed behind Five’s mountain of a gut.

“Well, don’t look at me!” Luther barked as Diego turned his head towards him. Luther actually had his right arm out the window to gain enough space.. 

“Here, give it to me.” Vanya reached out her arm. The other kept Five’s head steady. 

“Code?”

“1234,” Diego grumbled with shame. Moments later she was scrolling through the contacts and a few seconds later:

“It's ringing.” There was dead silence in the car as they all waited for the Doctor to pick up on the other side. Five’s laboured breathing became unbearably loud. 

“Red Canari,” Vanya suddenly exclaimed, and they all heard a short beep from the phone as the line was broken.

“It’s done,” She said, and turned her full attention back to Five again. He was looking like he had one foot in the grave already. Pale as a corpse with a soft sheen of perspiration over his face and neck. And all that blood..

Vanya hardly noticed as Diego turned into the street where the Hargreeves mansion was located, but she could smell the smoke before they all discovered what had happened to their home. 

“Oh no!” Luther moaned: “My research from the moon!”

“Dad’s booze!” Klaus mourned. 

“FUCK!” was Diego’s contribution. It was an adamant description of the situation, Vanya agreed.

“Now what do we do?!” Luther groaned: “We need to go somewhere to keep Five safe and get him the help he needs.”

“Leonard’s cottage.”

All three brothers currently being conscious turned towards their sister.

“Let’s go to Leonard’s cottage. No one will look for us there.” 

“You up to it, though?” Klaus asked her tenderly.

“I will, for Five,” she replied quietly. “Will this mysterious Doctor follow us there?”

“He will call me up again in a few minutes,” Diego replied: “I will text him the coordinates and he will come to any location of my choosing , for the right price of course.” he added.

“What about the Commission,” Luther mused: “If they want the briefcase back surely they will try again?” 

“Yes, but this time they have all the Hargreeves to deal with!” Diego growled.

“Not all of us,” Klaus sighed, making them all think of Ben, and their missing sister. 

“Five better survive this!” Luther growled, “Or else you WILL conjure his ass, Klaus!” And there it was, the great big elephant in the already crammed car. Where was Allison? 

Why had Five been so stressed out when he was about to explain what had happened to them on that mission? Was she still back there, two years into the future? Was she dead? Something must have gone ridiculously wrong, one look at Five’s distorted body told volumes of a mission gone awry. And he’d been trapped 20 years into his “Old future” again for seven months, alone. So where was Allison?

They continued the car trip in a silence only broken with Diego’s phone ringing a few minutes later. One ring, then silence. Diego instructed Vanya on how to dot the correct coordinates in a coded message, and a few minutes later a text message cheemed onto the display. One word: “Okidoki!” and a sushi emoji. For the rest of the drive they listened to Five’s struggled breathing as some kind of horror movie soundtrack. At least that noisy breathing was evidence he was still alive, because he didn’t look it..

Late afternoon they arrived at Leonard’s cottage, Luther bringing the bloodsoaked Five into the cabin with urgency in his steps. Diego headed into town to buy supplies and wait for the Doctor to arrive, while Klaus and Vanya hurried inside after Luther and Five.

Five was put in the same bed Vanya had shared with Lenoard those faithful nights some years ago when she first tried to tap into her powers, and she shrugged in silence as she pushed the memories as far back into her brainstem as she could. She turned Five over to his side to help his breathing. A soft groan made its way up his throat. Vanya made sure the cling film was still in place and instructed Klaus to find some water and cotton cloths for cleaning Five up a bit. She carefully cut his beloved sweater vest off by the seams so that the Doctor would have easy access to his wound when he arrived. The bloodsoaked undershirt she left as it was for the time being, and the tie had already been removed when they were back in the car.

“You hang in there, Five, you hear?” she murmured into his ear, carefully running her fingers through his hair to brush it away from his eyes. It had grown since he and Allison had left on the mission gone awry, seven long months of growth. He must have been so lonely and scared, or perhaps he took it in his stride this time around? Vanya always found it hard to see the older, more experienced mind inside Five’s youthful body.. Five moaned slightly, stirring under her touch

“Allison..” his voice but a painmuffled whisper, but Vanya caught her sister’s name escaping his lips. She beconked her brothers to stop their scurrying about and sharpened her senses.

“What about Allison, Five?” she asked him, a tender tone in her trembling voice.”Do you know where she is?”

“Keeping her.. safe..” Five mumbled and drifted off again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Luther whined, looking like he was just about to shake his brother awake for more information.

“I don’t know,” Vanya answered, “But if he says he’s keeping her safe, that’s good enough for me.” A soft smile washed over her face. Always the believer when it was about Five, Vanya.

An hour later Diego’s car returned, with a black Buick in tow. From the car a strange looking man emerged, dressed in camouflage coloured clothes and carrying with him a huge briefcase. The Doctor. Vanya, Klaus and Luther was ushered out of the kitchen and into the bedroom, while Five was moved to the kitchen, and Diego was appointed most unwilling nurse as the Doctor didn’t trust his siblings. The Doctor was a peculiar character, shy and aloof, a man in his mid forties, bald as an egg and with a unruly beard strutting in all directions. Diego watched him in silence as he tied up said beard and prepared for surgery. As he made his preparations he informed Diego of what would happen..

“The bullet is lodged inside his right lung. I need to remove it, or else he’ll bleed out.Then I need to close the wound. He will need a blood transfusion, anyone of you bosos with the same blood type?” 

Five was a type 0. Both Diego and Vanya had the same type, and Luther, but he was part chimp now, better not muddy the waters.

“Fetch the girl then, she will donate blood during the surgery. You will transfuse him afterwards.” Diego gave an awkward nod and fetched Vanya. He silently hated needles. There was a pretty good chance he might pass out when it was his turn..

Vanya entered the room silently, sat down on a kitchen chair beside Five who was now splayed out on the kitchen table (thank god for extension bars) and simply rolled up her sleeve like a trooper. 

Five minutes later she sat with a needle in her arm, squeezing a stress relief ball to keep the blood flow going, while Diego was pale as a sheet. He was suddenly finding himself having an orchestra seat to the insides of Five’s chest. It was a bloody mess. The doctor worked fluently and silently, not flinching for a second the two hours he was working on Five’s lung. Diego was given the task of monitoring Five’s breathing and pulse, and he was staring at the little blippity blipps of the small monitor The Doctor had conjured together with other crucial hospital equipment in miniformat. 

“As long as I watch his every heartbeat, as long as I register his every breath, he won’t die!” Diego told himself, staring, staring staring into the screen, hardly blinking. 

Finally the Doctor made the last closing stitches to Five’s chest.

“We need to move him to a bed. There I will hook you up to give him some more blood. His pulse is too low, he needs to up his blood volume. 

“He can have more from me,” Vanya offered. 

“No, you have given enough. Any more and you will need a blood transfusion.” He removed the needle from Vanya’s arm.

Luther was fetched to carry Five back into the bedroom, and Diego followed in their footsteps, biting his cheek. 

“Don’t you dare fainting, Diego Hargreeves!” he thought to himself. The doctor worked silently, connecting Diego’s blood flow with a vein in Five’s arm. Then he started following the heart monitor, vividly.

“He needs to be propped up in the back, so he doesn’t lay flat on his back. He seems to be having some kind of Vena Cava syndrome,”the Doctor pondered. Diego’s blank face made him add an explanation:  
“ Meaning trouble with the blood flow from his legs back to his heart.” 

Vanya looked puzzled.

“I thought Vena Cava Syndrome was something only pregnant women might get late in pregnancy.” 

“Yes, well... He might not be pregnant, but he is on the sturdier side lately,” Luther chimed in, forever grateful for no longer being the only Hargreeve with a disproportionate body. Vanya shot him a glare that shut him up, while Klaus brought them pillows to prop up Five’s back. A few minutes later Five was resting in a half laying, half sitting position.

“Preferably I would have had him lay flat on his left side, but I fear his sutures might rupture, so this will do.” The Doctor decided. After watching the ekg monitor intently a few more minutes he nodded for himself, satisfied. 

“He’s stable,” he concluded, having all the siblings in the room sigh a silent sigh of relief. 

“The next couple of days will be crucial. I will take in on the Hollyacre Inn back in town and I will visit you morning and night the following 48 hours. In case of an emergency, text me a sunflower emoji and I will be here within 15 minutes. Extra care is of course, extra fee..” he added, making sure Diego was agreeing to the plan. Diego answered him with a stern nod.

“The bill’s on me.”


	5. The longest wait

The Hargreeves siblings tried to settle in for the night, dreading what the night might unfold. Five might crash and die, the Commission could come blasting through the doors and they would all crash and die, Vanya might get a nervous breakdown being back in the cabin where she almost killed Allison and she would crash and they’d die..There was a lot of possible death, and not much comfort as the sun set and night settled over the landscape.

Five let out a muffled moan once in a while to state his continued presence in this world, and Klaus was growing more and more restless the less hangover he was becoming. He was afraid he would close his eyes for a second and Five’s spirit would appear when he opened them again. 

Diego had brought the Suitcase inside, keeping it close by as a bargaining chip if Commission agents were to blast through the doors. He was wringing his brain as to how to best negotiate with them if it came to it. Their relationship to the Hargreeves and especially Five had been a complicated one, to say the least. But after the Handler’s death they had simply agreed on a truce.The Temps Commission wouldn’t bother them, and the Hargreeves wouldn’t bother the timeline any more than a few designated engagements from the Commission itself. Like the last top secret assignment Five and Allison had agreed to do for Herb under the radar. 

A future president was planned to be taken out by a rogue league of earlier Commission assassins, goons for hire. Herb was still acting chairman of the board after the unruly business of Five executing the entire board of directors in a bad deal with the Handler. The bloodbath that little tyke had left in his wake during those two faithful weeks were they had fought off no less than two apocalypses was impressive, but not in a good way. All in good intentions of course. Diego sometimes wondered about how much killing Five had endured just to get back home to his dysfunctional family, and he reckoned it was as with Lila’s former lovers, best not to know.

Vanya wasn’t flinching from his brother’s bedside during the long hours of waiting. She kept Five warm, dry and kept an eye on his heart beating and his chest heaving. He looked so small and frail, so much younger than his years, and yet he looked like a stranger. Big bags under his eyes told their tales about a time with little rest while he’d been away. Her gaze soon fixed on the most visible change of his body, that ridiculously engorged belly. Diego had mentioned something about him being deformed further down as well after getting a glimpse of him as he got out of the shower last night, but Vanya didn’t know what to believe. It was all a mystery around Five, and she only hoped he would live to tell the tale.

Klaus lingered in the bedroom’s far corner as the night stretched on, feeling the need to be close to his sister if she needed him. He had felt the presence of Leonard trying to push through once or twice before, but he’d always been able to shake him off. But this cabin stretched the veil between the living and dead thin. It was the same with Five’s victims. At first they all came screaming at him at once when they caught him in a sober moment when he was in Five’s immediate presence. Women, men.. Old, young.. didn’t matter. Klaus had fought and clawed his mind free of them, knowing he would end up resenting Five if he let them in. It was only a job, Five had stated time and time again, but four years of nightmares he was trying to hide from his siblings told Klaus otherwise. Klaus had once asked Five who the little girl in a nightdress was, and Five ended up not speaking for a month. So Klaus didn’t push the matter further. He did see flecks of regret in Five’s eyes once in a while although he’d never admit it himself.

Luther was pacing the kitchen floor during the night, mind restless and heart racing. He didn’t know if he could stand being kept in the dark about Allison much longer. He was fed up with Five being reckless and cocky, his trackrecord was showing massive fuckups over and over again. This time it was Allison who was caught in the fire, the one of them who had a child. Luther had been uneasy with the whole business with the Commission. It was one last deal to make up for Five’s earlier shenanigans for the Handler. Luther knew logistically that all Five’s actions as a Temp Commission agent was in the name of getting back home to his family, but he wasn’t able to forget his brother’s murderous means to achieve his goal.

It was early morning when a weird “thump” and a metallic noise appeared under the kitchen sink. Diego recognised the sound immediately. It was a message from the Commission. To his surprise he found a pneumatic tube inside the water pipe under the sink. 

“How the hell did they find us?!” he grumbled, opening the tube with harsh movements. Inside was a small scrap of paper rolled together. Luther came clambering over, eager to see, as Diego unrolled it and revealed one sentence written on the paper with a typewriter.

“Will fetch the briefcase at midday. Herb.” Both Luther and Diego let out a grateful growl. One problem less then. But why had Herb sent those goons to assassinate Five if he now simply was fetching it himself? Something was off.. And both Diego and Luther were too dimwitted to pinpoint what.

“Luther, Diego, come quick!” there was alarm and fear in Vanya’s voice as she summoned them to the bedroom. Five was having some sort of seizure, his entire body convulsing as he was flopping up and down on the bed like a stranded salmon. 

“You need to call the Doctor!” she screamed, fighting to keep Five’s head steady. He started coughing. Blood was splattering the white bedsheets with each convulsion and the white bandage on his chest had a crimson rose growing on it in alarming speed.

Diego clambered with his phone, dropping it on the floor in the process. Luther was using his full body strength to keep Five from dropping to the floor. A terrible groan rattled through Five’s throat and just as sudden as the seizure had started it stopped. And so did his heart. 

“Oh my god!” Vanya stared at the monitor. She immediately started heart compressions, silently fearing her adding pressure to Five’s chest would do him more harm than good. 

There was a squeal from the corner of the room where Klaus was situated. He now looked petrified, glaring at something or someone the others weren’t able to see.

“No,” he moaned: “don’t you dare, you hear me! Get back into that body NOW, young Mister!” He was pointing towards the bed where Five’s limp body was located.

Vanya’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach. She realized Klaus was talking to Five. Not alive Five, but very much deceased Five.

“NO!” she yelled, punching Five in the chest as raw desperation started to well up in her chest. She wasn’t losing him too! They’d already lost Ben, Allison was nowhere to be seen and Five, Five was her best friend. 

“Wake up wake up, wake up!” she begged him, tears now pouring down her face, and she was ugly crying, the kind of ugly crying which had her looking like she was having a stroke, and she was holding on to Five for dear life, willing him, begging him, demanding him to stay alive. 

She wasn’t even aware of the energy that resurfaced as she pulled her brother in for a desperate embrace. She didn’t register the force waking inside her and flowing through her and into him as she called his name, over and over again. Her mind was oblivious to her brothers’ muffled gasps as the entire room was washed with a bright white light. 

“Vanya.. If I wanted saltwater taffy I’d told ya.”

Vanya looked up in disbelief. It could not be..

“Five?” she breathed. There, mere inches from her face Five was looking back at her, perplexed. Klaus was cheering jubilantly from his corner. 

“He’s gone, he’s gone! Five the grumpy ghost is gone!"


	6. Herb

He had no idea as to how the hell he had ended up back here, in Leonard Peabody’s old cottage of all places, and why Vanya was showering him with hot tears and snot. It was as if someone had pulled him back from a black and merciful sleep, without nightmares or memories, just silence, rest and bliss. To be yanked back into the chaos and noise that was his family had his mind recoil for a moment until there was a thought that made a sharp jostle in his chest. 

Allison!

Panic came over him as he struggled to get up.

“Allison,” he panted, swinging both feet out of bed before any of his siblings were able to stop him. Moments later he was stomping around on the floor, not even flinching by the sight of all the blood both on him and dripping around him as he was moving around . As he entered the kitchen he made a sharp stop, hands starting frantically searching for signs of life inside him. How long had he been out, how long had she been shut off from oksygen, from blood flowing through her veins? Half out of his mind he hurried over to the kitchen cabinets and pulled out a knife. 

Vanya watched in horror as she saw Five tumble out of the bed, started running his hands frantically up and down his body as in searching for the source of the blood all over him and then did something completely off as he fetched a kitchen knife. He turned around, now facing her and the rest of his siblings with a deranged face, pointing the knife towards his own flesh.

“Vanya, you need to help her!” he pleaded, knife now slowly starting to break the skin. Blood was starting to trail down his side.

“Five, what are you doing? Give the knife to me, ok? I’ll help you,” Vanya beckoned him, reaching out for the knife.

“You need to hurry, I can’t feel her..” Five’s eyes were radiating something beyond anything Vanya had ever seen him emote before.

“I’m so close, so close. I can’t lose her now..” Then, suddenly there was like a jolt of electricity went through his body, and his face dissolved from raw panic into pure relief within a heartbeat. The knife fell to the floor, and Five dropped on his back, unconscious.

“Why does he keep doing that?! Luther growled and rolled his eyes. 

Five was put back into bed, and Vanya gingerly removed his bandages to have his surgical wound a lookower. She marveled at the wound, or rather lack thereof. No trace was left from the surgery and the entry wound , only evidence left of the heavy surgery he’d gone through hours earlier was the bloodsoaked shirt and bandages she’d just pulled off him. She had Klaus fetch her towels and hot water, and silently started to wash off dried blood as she patiently waited for him to wake. She slowly realised she had pulled a loved one back to life again, like she had done with Harlan. 

One might wonder if Five had absorbed any of her sister’s powers as she pulled him back from the brink of death. Luther shuddered by the mere thought. Broody, moody, cocky Five who’d lived an entire life surviving on gut instincts and cockroaches. If he had absorbed any of the power that was Vanya the world suddenly had become a very dangerous place to live.

Diego started on breakfast, a simple homage to eggs and beans with a protein shake on the side for Luther to score bro points. His nerves were twitching with unease, as there was something about the whole Herb fetching the briefcase situation that did not make sense somehow. If only Five was awake, he’ d figure it out in mere seconds. He had a fierce intuition and presence about him that immediately smelled traps or treason. He had Lila figured from the get-go, while Diego had been too blinded by love to smell the roses. In four hours Herb would be here, maybe they would get some answers then, and maybe Five would wake up and stay both conscious and in the same room as them for more than five minutes.

Three hours later Five opened his eyes and demanded coffee like any given sunday morning. Vanya gave him a peculiar look, but let him roll out of bed. God, how ungraceful would he be by the end of this?! When he realised his (Luther’s) beloved uniform was ruined he mourned it with short, silent affection, before he grudgingly dressed in some of Leonard Peabody’s old clothes, grey sweatpants and white t-shirt. He felt like a hobo.

He soon smelled the nerves going on in the kitchen. Diego was looking particularly jumpy, even for him, Klaus was fidgeting with a deck of cards, while Luther was sitting calmly by the end of the kitchen table, glaring at him as Five entered. He was waiting for info on Allison of course, but that had to wait. Five needed to catch up with the situation. What had happened since he was jumped by the goons back at Griddy’s? How long had passed, why wasn’t he dead? And why did he feel strangely rejuvenated when he knew for a fact that there had been a gunshot wound the size of a penny in his chest the last time he was awake?

“I need coffee!” he grumbled, yanking Diego’s cup out of his hands and sat down opposite Luther who was still glaring at him, all “Number One’y”. 

“I know you have questions, Luther and I will answer them. But first I need you all to fill me in on the situation. Why are we here, what happened when I was out, where did the gaping hole in my chest go, etc.”

Diego was about to open his mouth when the all too familiar muffled sound of a Briefcase surfing into their timeline and space appeared out of thin air. 

“What the fuck, Herb’s not supposed to be here in an hour yet!” Diego wheesed and got to his feet. With a jump he was over by the kitchen counter where Five recognized the old briefcase he’d traveled back from apocalypse land with. 

“You brought it with us?!” he snapped, incredulously: “You dimwitted, half brained..”

“Hey! I brought it with me as a bargaining chip in hope of keeping your fat ass alive!” Diego snapped, just as Herb also snapped, out of thin air that was and on top of the kitchen counter.

“Herb!?” What the hell was going on here? Five put down the mug of horrible coffee and squinted suspiciously at the small figure currently being lifted down from the counter by Luther.

Herb looked tired, and even smaller than his usual self. There was a kind of haunted appearance on his face, and he looked stressed.

“What the hell man, you said noon!” Diego complained. “I haven’t started on a fresh pot of coffee yet.”

“Oh that’s kind of you Diego, but I will need to cut my visit short. I’m here to collect the briefcase, and to speak with Five, alone.”

“Oh, a shame you didn’t arrive ten minutes ago then.Then you would’ve been able to speak to Five without him snapping back,” Klaus chirped, earning a well earned scowl from said brother.

Five shoved Herb into the bedroom (that was reeking with old blood and sweat) and ushered a confused Vanya out before shutting the door behind her. Five sat down on the bedside, hands placed firmly at his sides (secretly missing the pockets of his little woolly shorts).

“So, what’s up Herb?” 

“I gather you’ve had a run in with some guns for hire back at Griddy’s,” Herb nervously pointed out as a small droplet of sweat started to appear over his left eyebrow.

“Your useless goons, I presume?” Five smirked.

“No. These were not Temps Commission agents, or at least they aren’t now.”

“So they have been before?” Five’s brow scrunched up as all forms of conspiracy theories started forming inside his mind.

“They were agents, but they’ve jumped ship for the highest bidder,” Herb explained.

“Ah, and who’s the highest bidder nowadays?” Five dug his hands firmly into the cheap, linted pockets of Leonard’s old sweatpants to keep them from twisting.

“It appears to be a rogue league of ex agents that’s working very hard to erase certain timelines the Commission is working very hard to keep fixed.They call themselves The Dark Horse.” Herb explained. “There appears to be a traitor within our ranks, a turncoat who’s feeding the Dark Horse vital information. I think I have a clue of who it is, and that’s why I messaged you to be her at noon, when my full intention was to be here at eleven am. I’m afraid you will get three dangerous visitors in about an hour, they are called the Scots.” 

Five rolled his eyes.

“The scots.. Come on, try to be a little imaginative?! I bet they’re triplets and assassins?!” he snarked.

“Actually they are not related at all and one of them comes from Wisconsin. The other two are scots though, bagpipes, kilts and all. But they are assassins and they will do anything to kill you.”

“Great!” Five shot his arms into the air. 

“So, what did I do this time to deserve a hit squad?!”

“Not you,” Herb said quietly and his eyes darted downwards, below Five’s chest. 

“Her.” Five looked down, closing his eyes as he took it all in.

“Allison,” he mumbled.

“Allison is important for the future, Five. She plays a key role in a set timeline 30 years from now on which Dark Horse is trying to eradicate. It’s essential that she gets born and grows up.” 

“Tall order given the certain circumstances,” Five sighed, running his hands through his hair.

“What’s her role in the future?”

“I can’t tell you that, your knowledge will ruin the order in which certain events need to unfold.” Herb was sweating for real now, adjusting the collar of his trenchcoat and fidgeting nervously with his watch. Five’s piercing glare did not help the matter, Herb was probably realising Five was catching on in a pace Diego and Luther only would have dreamed of.

“Convenient,” he muttered, straightening his back, cocking his head to the side. He was reading Herb’s features like an open book, and there it hit him, like a sledgehammer. The dawning sensation was making his hairs curl in the back of his neck and lighting the all too well known urge to wring someone's neck.This time it was Herb´s.

“You knew.” His words were barely audible, but the sudden twist in Herb’s eyes said it all.

“You knew what would happen if we took that job.” Five rolled his hands together into fists, feeling anger starting to pulsate through him in blue, short bursts.

“It was important for the timeline,” Herb sniveled, looking more and more at unease.

“You knew, that if Allison and I went to the future to avert the assasinaton of the future president that I would end up like this, some circus freak, and that Allison would lose her life.”

“She’s still alive, inside you,” Herb chimed in, eyes full of hope and kindness as they darted down to the area of Five’s body where she was currently residing.

“She was a mother!” Five snapped back: “You robbed Claire of the chance to grow up together with her mother. Now she will grow up in a warped reality where her mother is in fact younger than her.” He got up on his feet, a hot wave of resentment rising inside him like a tidal wave.

“I know you want to kill me right now, and I understand you even. But there will be another attempt at Allison’s life within the hour, and you better be ready for it. Vanya won’t be able to pull you back from death’s door any more times.” The urgency in Herb’s voice somehow shook Five back to reality and calmed the murderous side of him, just temporarily.

“Then what will I do?! It’s not exactly like I’m in the shape of my life right now. I can hardly manage a couple of blinks without passing out from exhaustion, and time jumping isn’t even an option.”

Herb held out his arm and handed him a briefcase, the one he’d arrived with.

“You will travel to any given time and hide, until Allison has reached adult life and the same age as she is now. Then, and only then you travel to 2023 with her, four weeks from now. You will simply tell your brothers and sister that you blinked away in hiding, killed the Scots and got Allison back from where you’ve been hiding her. While away you will have Allison trained to act like her old self, you’ll be teaching her everything she needs to know to go back into her old life.”

“Are you serious right now?!” Five was silently wondering if he was coming down from something.

“It is vital that you don’t tell anybody when or where you go. This Briefcase has the tracking device removed, but use it wisely. Any time jump gives off an enormous stamp in the time and space continuum. One or two jumps might get past the detectors, but only if you use it wisely. Hopefully you’ll regain your time jumping abilities when Allison is.. born. Then you’ll be able to move more freely when needed.”

Five was now tugging his hair intently.

“You have got to be kidding me..!” Herb trotted forward, patting Five very carefully on the arm.

“I know i’m asking a lot of you, old chap. But it’s the only way to keep Allison safe.” Five closed his eyes shortly, sadness now washing over him as realisation was starting to dawn on him as well as the dire urgency of the situation.

“I just wanted to grow up together with my family,” he exhaled, already mourning all the lost moments of sibling squabbling, tiny effortless moments of togetherness and mundane that he had experienced too little off since the age of thirteen. . 

“I’m afraid I have to go now,” Herb finally said and took one step back. He picked up the other Briefcase, the one Five had found in the future a couple of days ago. 

“The Scots will follow this briefcase back to 1956, where I’ve arranged for a little ambush to make sure they won’t bother your siblings again.You are safe to leave them, they will be safe.”

Five got to his feet and looked Herb sternly in the eye. 

“Fuck you for doing this to us!” he told him calmly, then started working on setting the briefcase.

“Stay smart, stay alive,” Herb told him friendly, and was gone in a whoosh. 

Five was just pushing the button to set his briefcase in motion the second Vanya came running down the door.

“Oh no, you don’t!” she screamed and jolted forwards in a very unVanya move, flinging herself towards Five who was just about to vanish through the fabric of time and space.

“Vanya, no!” Five yelled, but in vain. Their two bodies collided and they tumbled over each other on the bed, on top of Five`s bloodsoaked old uniform just as the handlebar of the briefcase snapped into place and off they went in an explosion of white light.


	7. 1979

Shit!

Five rolled over to his side and emptied his stomach. A few meters to his left Vanya was doing the same thing, dry heaving for a moment as the effect of the time jump slowly wore off. She was holding something between her hands, she had grabbed on to the nearest thing her fingers could claw onto as she was tossed into the time vortex with Five. The scraps of fabric currently lodged into her fingers just happened to be the sorry remains of Five’s uniform.

“Vanya,” Five moaned as he slowly got to his feet: “I was supposed to travel alone!”

Vanya shot him a glare and shook her head slowly.

“Yeah, well. I’m done taking orders from the Commission,” she panted as she dried her mouth. She was still tumbling around a little, obviously dizzy.

“Where are we, and when?” She came to his aid to steady him in the last moment before he would’ve toppled over again. Five held his breath, and let her.

“1979, still in the forest where Leonard’s cottage is, or more precisely Leonard’s grandma’s cottage,” Five explained, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

“There wasn’t too much time to prepare for where, and I figured, better start here and work out a more feasible plan for the next jump.”

“You’ve got orders to go into hiding?” she asked him, not pushing for more at the moment, and Five secretly loved her for it.

“Something like that. Let’s just hope Leonard’s grandma isn’t currently on vacay in her charming forest shack,” Five sighed and slowly started to work his way down a narrow forest trail. According to the coordinates the cottage would be a ten minute walk south of where they were currently located, by a little lake in the woods.

The time jump had taken its toll on his already battered body and Five soon fell behind Vanya’s brisker tempo. The nausea was still swelling inside him and he had to stop occasionally to heave.

“You alright?” Vanya asked him carefully, a hand on his shoulder as he discreetly rested a feverish forehead against the trunk of an old oak for a few seconds.

“Yeah, just peachy!” he grizzled, with what he believed was an optimistic flare.

“You’re not much of a liar,” she murmured and took him by the hand.

“Come on, let’s see if we can find you a soft bed. You need rest.” He kept his mouth shut and let her lead him. As the forest around him was getting more and more of a blur he focused on Vanya’s soft voice and her steady hand. Thank god for her, and fuck Herb!

Thankfully, the cottage was empty when they arrived an hour or so later. It already appeared to have seen its best years, and mercifully, in 1979, there were still years until Leonard was born, or them for that matter. The door and windows had been barred shut, evidence this was a piece of property mainly used in the summertime. Now it was late autumn and the hut appeared prepared for winter, which would mean no one would bother them anytime soon. Good. There was quite the hike to get into town though, and Five knew he wasn’t in any fit state to even try that on.

Vanya seemed to read his mind.

“Don’t fret, I’ll handle the supplies when we get to it, your task is to recuperate.” Five wanted to protest, but gave in to allowing himself to be weak this once. His stomach was still in an uproar, he was starting to wonder if Allison also was suffering from time travel sickness.

Shortly after he found himself neatly tucked in the same bed as he’d found himself earlier that morning, only on a firmer mattress. He gave Vanya a thankful look, and was gone.

Vanya went through the cottage while Five was sleeping. She made a small fire in the fireplace to keep her brother warm and found plenty of canned goods in the pantry. They would live quite comfortably here for a week or two as long as they weren’t picky. She even found a reasonably supplied medicine cabinet. Making sure he was still sleeping firmly she went to get water from the well just outside, and even stopped to marvel at the stars before she went inside again.

The next morning Five woke up with Vanya sleeping next to him in the bed, fully clothed and on top of the bedsheets. He was silently studying her for a few moments while he also did an inner checkup on his tiny imposter. There were steady movements from his core, including what felt like a tapdance session on the top of his bladder. He let out a relieved sigh and closed his eyes for a moment, remembering too well the panic he’d felt yesterday, when he woke up, searched for signs of life and found none. He never wanted to experience such an amount of terror ever again. It was an even worse trauma than finding his siblings dead in the rubble and ruins of the Hargreeves Mansion back when he was thirteen. Allison was solely dependent on him right now, and such a responsibility was not taken lightly by Five.

While Five had been lost in thought Vanya had woken and had now turned towards him with sleepy eyes.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he murmured, even gracing her with a crooked smile. She returned the smile and propped her head up towards the back of her hand.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him.

“Better, I think,” Five answered honestly. He didn’t want to poke too much around in body and mind, afraid of scaring away the comfy. They both fell silent for a while, Vanya rolling over to her back, studying the ceiling, while Five was silently bracing himself for what had to come.

“You think you’ll ever be comfortable with telling me what happened to Allison?” Just softly spoken words, no accusations, no demands. Vanya kept staring up at the ceiling.

Five held his breath as he very clumsily sat up, and after some fumbling he was leaning his back heavily against the headboard to be able to breathe properly. He felt his stomach doing somersaults while he silently waited for Vanya to do the same. She sat up, honest fear evident in her eyes although she kept her mouth shut.

Five straightened his back as much at it would let him, looked Vanya firmly in the eye, and said the following mindblowing five words as if he was reciting a famous quote with lazy ease:

“I’m pregnant with Allison.”

Silence.

Vanya closed her eyes, touched her temples for good measure and parroted Five’s words:

“You’re pregnant, with Allison..? What, do you mean Five, you knocked up our sister and left her in the future??” Five all but rolled his eyes twice, and repeated, very slowly:

“I am pregnant. Pregnant with Allison.” He gestured his gut for good measure. Vanya looked like she was having a small stroke. Five, heart on his sleeve, took her hand and gently placed it on his stomach. She winced as it immediately started reacting, somehow, to her touch.

“I brought Allison home with me, although something went sideways in the process. So she’s now residing inside me, and I am hereby the first male elderly virgin in a 17 year old teenaged body pregnant with my own sister."

He let that one sink in for a moment.

“Now, how’s that for a time and space continuum fuckup?!”

He allowed Vanya to recover from his story for a moment and beckoned rudely towards the universe of fuckups and inwardly told all shit to go to hell.Vanya politely changed her “stroke- face” into her “what the hell has Five been smoking- face”.

“You don’t believe me?” Five asked her, incredulously: “You think I could dream up something this fucked up?!”

_His stomach is moving! It’s rising and sinking, and there is something, someone?!, inside it reacting to my touch_?!

Vanya vaguely remembered their father speaking about how time travel could screw with your mind. She also remembered Luther's vivid description of Five’s behaviour when he met his older younger self back in the sixties. Paradox psychosis wasn’t to be trifled with. And quite frankly, Five probably checked any of the seven criterias of paradox psychosis on a daily basis.

“Listen, I’ll go put the kettle on. We’ll have coffee, and you’ll tell me all about how you got impregnated with our sister in spite of lacking both a vagina and a uterus,” Vanya told him and touched his palm gently, feeling him flinch by her touch. She threw a sideway glance at him as she moved towards the door. He looked hurt. Vanya had seen that face a handful of times during their childhood, but this was the first time she had been the reason for it.

“It’s a lot to take in, that’s all. I know you will make me understand.” It sounded as hollow as it felt.

Five watched her escape to the kitchen and felt his chest well up with emotions he wasn’t even aware he was able to inhabit. He was losing his mind like this! Trapped inside a body that was raging with hormones, both from puberty and a pregnancy Five was starting to believe he was about to implode. He was both furious and heartbroken with Vanya for not believing him. His mind screamed at him to punch something and at the same time to cuddle himself and have a good cry. A good cry?! For crying out loud, he was more likely to go into a homicidal rage than to keel over and cry like a fifteen year old girl.

He pushed off the bed and got to his feet, tugging at the blasted t-shirt he already hated with a passion and trodged out into the kitchen where Vanya already was busy boiling coffee.

“She rumoured me.” His intentions had been to walk into the kitchen and scowl at her in silence, but his tongue betrayed him. Vanya turned towards him, doubt still evident in her eyes.

“I was exhausted, I failed her.. I wasn’t able to take us both back.. So she rumoured me. She could’ve rumoured my strength back, she could’ve rumoured me to magically find a briefcase. But no. She rumoured me to become this.” He gestured meekly towards himself, the walking clown.

“Somehow I am now an old man in a young body that’s apparently transformed somehow into both part male and female. And I am pregnant. With.. My.. Sister..” The last words came stuttering out like small croaks as years and years of defences and fences were torn down in a heartbeat. He cracked. Like Humpty Dumpty. And he was pretty sure there was no superglue in the entire universe that would get him back together again.

Vanya watched as Five’s face and body started to sag and he sat down heavily by the kitchen table suddenly looking older than his actual years.He hid his face behind his hands, slender fingers trying to hide something Five had kept hidden with such stubborn pride his entire life, his vulnerability. Then his shoulders started to shake together with soft sobs, a sight and a sound so rare Vanya felt she was invading his privacy. This was worse than the time she had stumbled upon Diego and Klaus.. “experimenting” on each other..

“Five, I…” she felt helpless. How could she reach him in this state?

He looked up for a second, raw emotion jarring his eyes.

“Did I mention I’m supposed to give birth to her, raise her to become Allison again and hide her until she’s an adult? And that it all was Herb’s plan from the beginning?!” He buried his face into his hands again, a choked moan escaping his lips.

_Still waters run deep._

The spell dropped and Vanya was able to move again. She scooted over to Five and drew him in for a firm embrace, not letting him shy away from her. She wasn’t letting go of her frustrating furiously marvelous brother ever again. She gently moved his hands and arms away from his face and placed her hands on both sides of his tear streaked cheeks. She didn’t let go until he hesitantly met her gaze.

“You are not alone in this, Five. I’m here with you. ”

_I’ll hold your hand, even when you won’t let me._

So he’d had himself a good old cry then. And he actually felt a little better after. Although there was no way in hell he would admit that to anyone, including himself. Five only worked when his barricades were firmly in place. He let Vanya wash the snot and tears off him, and he let her hug him, he even hugged back, realising how much he was missing the companionship of Delores. But his sister was.. flesh and blood, and that somehow complicated things for the man who had grown up all alone in a dead world.

The second morning he woke up in 1979 Vanya had a surprise for him. She handed him nothing less than his old UA Uniform, meticulously washed and stitched back together. Except for a small scar where a bullet once had torn through the fabric there wasn’t a trace or a bloodstain left on the once more pristine white shirt and the sweater vest looked like it was straight off the rack.

“How..?!” he stuttered, then just got up and hugged her like she had given him the best christmas present.

“I know how much it means to you so I washed it and.. stitched it back up,” she told him, kind eyes brimming with pride.

“It’s perfect, Vanya. Thank you.”

He felt more like himself again when he changed back, it was like his brain clicked into place again and the haze lifted.

He had a big decision to make though. Five had to figure out a safe place to go next, where they hopefully would be able to stay.. This time they might have to stay for years, it was crucial they made the right decision.

“I wish there was a way we could take our brothers with us,” Vanya sighed.

“There is no way I’m involving the blabbering trio in this,” Five snapped as he rubbed his side. For half a second images of Luther, Diego and Klaus all dressed in hospital gowns and making “I’ll catch it!”- hands towards him. He shuddered. No, with Vanya it already was a crowded situation. He realised he hadn’t given the actual birth of Allison any thought during the last eight months or so he’d be carrying her around. It was simply shoved into the back of his brain, too much to take in, better hide it, better ignore it. But he was coming to a point now where there was no more use hiding his head in the sand.

He had no knowledge about pregnancies further than the approximate expected gestation period and where the baby was supposed to exit. Reginald Hargreeves hadn’t bothered with teaching them about the birds and the bees back at the academy, and when Five was left alone in the future he was more preoccupied with the pre stages of pregnancy, so to speak. It happened he found a book or even a magazine with pretty descriptive pictures and text, and he would keep his dirty literature hidden from Delores, knowing he wouldn’t hear the end of it if she found them.

He craved though, to go somewhere he knew, somewhere he felt safe. He longed, to his great surprise, for the Hargreeves Mansion. Although cold and uninviting as it was it would always be Five’s first home. And it was big, so one could hide away when one needed a little privacy or a breather.

But in 2023 the mansion had burned down, and his three brothers were now homeless. And as he sat there, a plan formed in Five’s head. A wild plan that was a solid fuck you to Herb, and one that might even save the lives of a little old lady and a foul waitress, and, as an added bonus, the mansion. The backside of the medallion though, he would have to suffer through the rest of the pregnancy with his loving brothers by arms length, both as fierce protectors and fiercely annoying shitheads.


	8. Hail Mary XL

He timed it perfectly. Just as his former self zapped out of the library Five blinked into the library. Ten minutes earlier he and Vanya had briefcased into an upstairs bathroom, a spot he knew would be empty as himself and his siblings all would be gathered in the kitchen right now, and later the library. That gave him ten minutes to shake the travel sickness off and gather enough strength to blink into the library.Vanya was to wait in the bathroom until needed, it was vital she and her former self didn’t meet. Paradox psychosis wasn’t anything anyone with Vanya’s powers should ever be induced for.

He waited until the exact moment his former self left, swallowed some bile and blinked himself into the library where his siblings were just about to say very little flattering things about their disappearing brother. 

“Five! What the hell!” Diego snapped as Five most ungracefully toppled over him on the sofa. Flopping helplessly Five was hoisted up by Luther into a standing position.

“Thanks,” Five croaked and denied the urge to puke.

“What’s with the blinking?” Vanya started, but Five cut her off, quite abruptly.

"and the excessive sweating?" Klaus chimed in. 

“Everyone shut up, we don’t have much time if this is to work!”

“Now, you hold on a minute,” Luther started, but was also shut down to the viciousness in Five’s eyes. That little dude ment business!

“I am not the Five that just left the library, I’m Five seven days further down the line.”

“Oh no, not this shit again!” Klaus whined and rolled his eyes.”Will you just stay in one timeline for frick’s sake?!” Five gave him a good old glare that shut him up and continued:

“In just under one hour four big armed dirtbags will break into our home, in hunt for the briefcase the former me came with. After finding said briefcase out in the hall they will be setting the mansion on fire. At this time you guys are not home, but will be out looking for me. Half an hour later, at exactly 13.47 I get attacked at Griddy’s and will valiantly be taking out three of them, but failing to save two civilians in the process. The last goon is killed by you, Diego. Escaping we first go home but discover the Mansion is set on fire, so we all escape to Leonard Peabody’s old cabin. So:” Five snapped his hands together:

“I need your help to let it all happen again with the following three important changes. One: The mansion doesn't burn to the ground. That will be current Vanya’s task. Two: Civilian one, a nice little old lady survives, and third: A sour waitress, also survives. I will make sure of that together with you guys. Any questions?”

The library exploded in questions:

“Current Vanya?”

“Are you high on something?”

"Are you suddenly saving civilians now?" 

“The Mansion burns?”

“Griddy’s opened again?”

Five tore his hands through his hair in growing frustration:

“Forget questions, we don’t have the time! We need to go.”

“Not until we have proof that you’re actually Five from the future,” Luther chimed in, broad arms crossed against his chest to show his stand. 

“Yes,” Vanya chimed in: “Where’s future me?”

“I’ll bring all of you to her, except you.” he pointed at Vanya. “It’s too great a risk of you two developing Paradox Psychosis.”

“Yeah, we don’t want a repeat of that!” Luther agreed and shuddered.

“You go wait in the car and we will join you when the imbeciles here are convinced.”

Five led the way up to the second floor, hating every single step in that blasted staircase. They should’ve chosen the downstairs one. Panting discreetly and leaning heavily on the doorframe he showed them inside the bathroom where Vanya was waiting anxiously.

There was no time for ceremony, they had to cut the meet and greet with future Vanya short, but Diego, Klaus and Luther were thoroughly convinced and agreed to go ahead with Five’s ambitious lead.

“What’s the plan then,” Diego asked him.

“I’ll tell you on the way,” Five answered: “But we need to stop and buy a couple of Red Bulls and steal a couple of store mannequins on the way.” 

Three minutes later they were scrambled together in Diego’s car. Five, scrunched into the middle of the backseat, was silently wondering if he would be able to breathe at all for the next twenty minutes, let alone tell them all what would happen during the next hour.

He managed to inform them about the plan, but was careful not to tell them anything more than the very details they needed. This had to go down close to exactly the same as the last time in all matters except the three factors he wanted to change. It was vital the Hargreeves siblings reacted the same way, and it was even more vital they didn’t tell “old him” about this, he needed to be kept in the dark. And they didn’t need to know that he was going to be lingering between life and death the next few days. 

“This is important you guys, no matter how bad you want to stop at the mansion, you have to go to Leonard’s cottage, no matter what!” Five stressed twenty minutes later as he was chugging down Red Bulls as if his life depended on it. He needed rocket fuel to pull the following stunt off in his current state, but Red Bull would have to do.

“There’s something you’re not telling us,” Vanya silently stated. Five closed his eyes and weighed his following words thoroughly:

“There’s lots I’m not telling you, but I can tell you this: We all survive as long as we go to Leonard’s cottage.”

“Well, that’s good enough for me!” Klaus cheered jubilantly and awkwardly made an attempt to raise his arms. There was no space to get them back down afterwards so he just kind of sat there frozen in a half jubilant position.

Fifteen minutes later Klaus walked out of a store with two lady mannequins under his arms and a bottle of ketchup, as ordered by Five. The store manager even held up the door for him as he left.

“How did you pull that off?” Diego asked him, more than a little impressed.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, bad boy!” Klaus smirked and shucked the dolls into the trunk with a toothy smile.

They arrived at Griddy’s at 13.27, twenty minutes before Five would get shot, and parked the car behind the cafeteria where Klaus helped Five to unload the mannequins. Klaus actually had done a very good job. The first one had long blonde hair and a pink little shirt and skirt. Not a Griddy’s uniform, but close enough. Five knew he wouldn’t stop to ponder the details later on. The other doll was complete with a little old lady outfit almost matching the one Marna currently was dressed in inside the cafeteria. Five lay them down on the ground in front of him and opened the bottle of ketchup.

“What are you doing with...oh..” Klaus watched in silence as Five smeared ketchup over the blonde dolls throat and over the left side of the elder doll's face.

“Ok, now listen. This is vital for the timing, everybody. I will blink in and out three times. First to get the waitress who I’ll knock out to keep her from screaming bloody murder. Second, the little old lady. Then, third time I’ll blink in with the mannequins and at exactly that time you haul your asses and car over to the front, and get inside where, you, Diego, kill the last goon. My former self will have killed the other three at that time.”

“Five, are you sure we’ll be able to pull this off, are you sure you’ll be able to pull this off?” Vanya had a big worried frown on her face. 

“I’m sure.” Five told her calmly, silently hoping his racing heartbeat wasn’t too loud. Damn that Red Bull was effective!

The clock slowly crept closer to crunch time, and Five was just about jittering by the back window, peering for Lyra the sour waitress to make a move for the kitchen. He just about got a glimpse of the back of his head from where he was standing, and he could feel the waitress’ scowl all the way outside. There! She was leaving. Five held his breath and jumped. He landed just in front of Lyra as she was about to walk over to a refrigerator. The shock on her face was priceless, and he relished in her cut short squeal as he spatial- pulled her outside to the backyard where Klaus conveniently knocked her out with a bottle.

“Couldn’t resist, mate,” he smirked and raised his shoulders apologetically.

“Get inside the car, get ready!” Five wheesed and jumped again. He jumped inside the cafeteria mere moments before the guns of hire would come stampeding down the place, and just as himself was safely tucked inside a small bathroom stall. 

He landed in front of Marna with a little tumble, regaining his balance in his stride and pulled her with him before she managed to make a sound. They tumbled to the ground a moment later, Marna landing firmly on her bum with an utterly surprised look on her face and him sprawled out on the grass beside her. A grunt of discomfort escaped him as he pulled to his feet with a whole less oomph left in his body.

“Go live your life, Marna,” he told her solemnly, grabbed hold of the two mannequins and made the fifth and vital jump with every nerve in his body starting to protest. This would be the jump that surprised the attackers, and the one that might destroy everything Five was trying to undo. He zapped the waitress- doll in place first, moving so swiftly he wasn’t noticed behind the counter, then came the last and final move, getting the Marna- doll in place. Five jumped, landed straight by the feet of the first attacker, making sure the big lump was blocking the shot for the other three. He then looked up at the hooded goon, smirked and yelled with a little old ladylike voice:

“Please, he’s just a child, leave the boy be!” And then, just as the surprised attacker was about to grab hold of him Five did a last blink, and ended up back outside in the backyard where he keeled over and returned all of the Red Bull like a drunken teenager. He didn’t pull himself back together until he heard the sound of the gunshot moments later. The sound made a haunting echo through his chest, and he had to touch the spot where his scar was located just to be sure he wasn’t hit again.

Marna was staring dumbly at him, probably in shock as Five stumbled to his feet and hobbled over to the front to see his siblings off. Standing at the corner watching from a distance Five watched in horror as Klaus suddenly appeared in the doorway, got hold of him and scrambled over.

“Five! You just got shot!” he howled, panic poring through his features and eyes.

“What do we do, what do we do?” Five, feeling utterly shit, looked Klaus sternly in the eye.

“You go back inside, and you do all you can to save me. Remember what I told you, go to Leonard’s cottage and we ALL survive. I can’t tell you any more, Klaus.” Klaus seemed to be battling his emotions for a moment, then drew Five in for a fierce hug and murmured into his ear:

“Love you, little guy!” and ran back inside where he promptly stumbled over the briefcase. Five just managed to hear him yell to the others:

“ Isn’t this the briefcase Five had with him when he dropped last night?”

Three agonising minutes later Five watched them leave, Luther carrying him out into the car while he was bleeding all over the place. How the hell did he survive that? Oh wait.. he didn’t. After watching the car speed off Five closed his eyes and let his body droop towards the ground. He was bone tired and needed to rest, just for a minute. The cops would be swarming the place within minutes, but he wasn’t able to stand, let alone walk just now. 

As he sat there he felt a shadow fall over his head, and he opened his eyes squinting up on none other than Vanya.

“Come on,” she told him gently and held out an arm. I have a cab waiting for us down the street.” How he got to his feet he didn’t know, and how Vanya was able to drag his ass over to the cab he had no idea.

“The old lady and the waitress,” he mumbled as he felt the cab skid into motion.

“I’ve already called an ambulance, they will be fine. You did good, brother.” And then, darkness, sweet blissed darkness.


	9. The calm before the storm

Vanya told him he’d slept for 18 hours straight when he came back to the world of the living. Five didn’t feel rejuvenated at all. He felt like he’d run a marathon on his bare feet, and the nausea from the recent time jump and all the sudden spatial jumps was still cursing through him like waves.

“You need to take it easy for a couple of days, Five. Remember, you’re not the only one in that body right now.”

Vanya had smiled at him when she said it, and it made him feel like basking in the sun on a hot summer's day. Although grown up as a hermit, Five didn’t mind some tenderness once in a while, and Vanya reminded him of Delores in a way.

They were alone in the mansion, and the mansion happily wasn’t burned down to the ground although it smelled like it. The Dark Horse- goons had peppered the hall with bullets and had a really good fire going until they finally left and Vanya was able to put it out with a couple of rugged fire extinguishers. She already was in contact with a decent carpenter that was going to come by during the day and throw some figures at her.

In about four days their brothers would come swarming down the doors, and Five sort of hoped the last stretch of his..predicament would be over and done with by then. Although.. He wasn’t looking forward to this birthingbit of the situation at all. If mom had still been ticking around she might’ve performed a c-section on him. But she was long since gone during the whole wonky timeline dealing with the Sparrow Academy. Thank god that was all over and done with, though.. He only hoped his meddling with the timeline hadn’t messed up anything big or vital this time. Saving one mansion and two ladies shouldn’t be the worst offsetter of a butterfly effect, he hoped.

Him and Vanya shared two nice days and evenings together in the library doing nothing but reading. Five wasn’t up to anything more, a slow walk down the stairs was enough to have him wheezing at the time being. And Vanya kept him company the way she did best, by just being there in silence, together with him. He knew she kept close by because she worried about him, but as long as she didn’t hover it was ok. He wasn’t too keen on being alone either way at the moment. The nights tended to make his mind wander to places he didn’t want to go.

It was nice to just forget the world for a little while, and ignore what was happening with him until his mind was ready.

On the third day back home in the mansion Five went to fetch a new set of uniforms from Luther's closet. Feeling the closest he’d been to rested in eight months he took his newfound stamina in full stride. Vanya almost jumped backwards when he entered the kitchen, boyish spring somehow back in his step and hands neatly tucked away in his pockets.

“What do ya think?” he flashed her a smile and positively beamed at her. He silently hoped his ridiculous posture had diminished some during the night.

“You cleaned out nicely,” Vanya nodded in agreement and smiled at him a little unsure.

“Some newfound energy today?”

“Yeah, something like it. I’m going to the library, wanna come?”

“Sure, but do you think you should be out and about at this.. time?” She still had that hesitant look on her face. Five could feel an itch of irritation gnaw at the back of his neck.

“Sure I can. It’s not like Allison is gonna drop out of me as I stroll down the street, and the Commission won’t be figuring out our little one-eighty in the timeline in a while yet,” Five argued.

“I need some fresh air, and besides I need to borrow some books on.. you know..” He could feel heat rising in his cheeks, all the hormones from puberty rotting together on him. Back in 2019 he had feared he would stay forever thirteen. When his body slowly and steadily continued to develop the way a normal teenager would grow he could have wept in gratitude. But he was still standing knee deep in puberty with both feet. Always the battle between raging hormones, a body still developing and a 62 year old mind still anchored to the dexterity of the body and weight of a full grown man. No wonder he looked like Bambi on ice when he was running. Arms and legs were still flying all over the place, even four years later.

“Oh, you mean about childb..”

“ _Not_ comfortable with that word, just yet,” Five snapped. “Let’s just go to the library and I’ll borrow some books on the matter!”

“Sure,” Vanya almost managed to hide her enjoyment: “Let’s go borrow some books on the matter that mustn't be mentioned!” His scowl slid right off her and she actually had the nerve to laugh her timid little laugh as he stomped down the hallway.

Five was acutely aware that him being out and moving in public wasn’t the brightest idea, but he was getting cabin fever and he really needed to start preparing for the following ordeal. He was vaguely familiar with words like labor and contractions, but how it all went down…

_Well, he once had seen a TV show where a lady had a big stomach and suddenly there was a puddle of water on the floor. She yelled “The baby is coming!” and someone, her husband perhaps, lay her straight down on the ground and she was making some weird faces while he looked up her skirt and pulled out an enormous baby with some ketchup on it._

The sight and smell of the library was like ointment on aching muscles. Five closed his eyes for a moment and savored the atmosphere. If the mansion was his home, this was his sanctuary. He’d spent many hours pouring over books inside these walls as he grew up. In what little spare time he and his siblings were granted almost every single minute of them was spent here. Sometimes he even blinked in here at night to continue his education on the mathematics of Time Travel, theories, paradoxes and possibilities.

But this time he wasn’t looking for books on advanced mathematics, this was a whole other ballpark of science where his knowledge was slim at best. Vanya politely pointed him in the right direction and let him sweat in peace as he fidgeted through entire book shelves on the topic.When he was about to self combust she kindly rematerialised.

“How the hell do you choose, there are so many!” he whined and wiped his brow in appalled defeat.

“Here, I’ll show you a couple of good ones,” she told him and pulled out a few books, easy as pie.

“What, you’ve read these?!” Five marvelled.

“Yeah, when I was young and impressionable, “ Vanya smiled: “A girl needs to educate herself, you know. And our father did little to enlighten us in the matter.” It suddenly dawned on Five how different life had turned out for Vanya unlike how she must have imagined it to unfold. She had dreamed of a life starting a family, having kids..

“There’s still time you know,” Five murmured taking the books she offered. She looked confused for a moment, then understood where he was going.

“Nah.. after the whole Leonard affair.., and after losing Sissy I don’t see that for me.” There was a sad note in her voice, but she hid it well.

“Yeah, you’ll be happy to know I’m sharing the parental rights on our sister,” Five snarked back, making them both chuckle a little, and making more than one head turn within hearing range.

“We better get going,” Vanya whispered: “We’re making everybody’s ears vibrate.”

Five spent the rest of the day and night reading through the books, cover to cover. It was like reading a dull horror story that ended up terrifying you either way. The books were very technical on some points and then tipped over to emotional porn on other notes. There were entire chapters on the importance of a loving and supporting birthing partner and how they were to act around the one in labor. Five wasn’t having any of it. If he was doing this he was doing it by himself, without anyone offering him iced cloths on his forehead, whispering words of support and love in his ears or rubbing his back during contractions. Five had no intentions of sharing emotions and “showing pain” to anyone.

And then the pictures! When Five first flipped over a page to find a big technicolour picture of a head crowning he was dry-heaving for a total of ten minutes afterwards. How was that even humanly possible?! And then the technical facts about labor, contractions, the three stages of labor, something awful called the placenta and so forth. But that picture of a baby’s head coming out of a woman’s ‘you know what’.. Five was mentally scarred for life..!

He would be sticking to the strictly technical bit of labor and childbirth. He read a decent chapter on homebirth and how to manage if there wasn’t a hospital nearby and decided that would be his route. He simply needed to gather some supplies and find a suitable room in the mansion, and lock himself in there when time came. Hopefully it would start at night and he’d be done by morning without alarming anyone else in the mansion. When was it time, though? He reckoned he was about 38 weeks along, and that would give him anything between a week or four before the grand finale.

Vanya watched Five slowly settle down in the mansion. His cheeks gained color again, he was moving with more ease, and he looked calm, or as calm as Five could get, she guessed. She tried to engage in conversations with him about how to prepare for the coming birth, but he wouldn’t have it. She feared he would do something crazy when the time came, like making a time jump with the briefcase to give birth alone. But anything could happen during a birth, and with Five.. Was he even anatomically able to go through it? He had told her as much as his boy parts had been replaced with girl parts when Allison rumoured him, but he was still carrying Allison inside the body of a teenage sized boy. Narrow hips and pelvis, not cut out for the ordeal of childbirth. And he was like a child when it came to understanding what labor and childbirth involved. So she pushed, and pushed again, hoping he would open up, hoping he would listen to her and letting her guide him some in this world of women. But then again, who was she to lecture him. She hadn’t been pregnant, hadn’t any first experience with neither pregnancy or labor. But she had gut instincts on the matter, and she had an inkling that the pain Five was about to experience would throw him by surprise. She knew he wasn’t a stranger to the aspect of pain, but this was something other than a snapped leg or getting shot, something other than enduring torture by the occantionable sadist.

And by a day or two their brothers would be home, and Five would tense up again, and return to being his snarky defensive old self. That never fading guardianship he had for his family was always hidden behind a front of sarcasm and bile.

Vanya discovered one night that Five drew secret baths late at night where he was having conversations with Allison, and even humming to her in that awful way that always made her hairs curl. She had stumbled by the bathroom door by accident on her way to the kitchen, hunting for a snack when she heard his voice. At first she had believed he was talking to her and was about to answer, but then she stopped to listen and heard _her_ name.

“Any day now our brothers will be back, Allison. I haven’t told them where you are hiding yet, so that’ll be fun.. I bet you’ll have a field day listening in on that coming trainwreck.” Vanya marveled at how soft his voice was when he was talking to, well his stomach. And although she knew it was wrong she couldn’t help herself, she stayed on and listened.

“It’s getting quite cramped in there, you sure you won’t come out? Would’ve been nice to have a face to talk to, you know,” he murmured, and Vanya closed her eyes, biting back a sob.

“I have to admit I’m not looking forward to the actual part of you.. well… entering the world again through me.. But I’d do anything for you Allison and you know that. I would do anything for any of you.” There was a long quiet and Vanya was just about to sneak off when Five’s hushed voice almost floored her:

“I love you, tiny Allison. Stay safe in there.”


	10. What's up with Five?

Vanya decided she would give Five a nice day out at the dawn of the day of their brothers’ expected return. He was already starting to act stressed out about the fact that the mansion was about to get a whole lot more crowded, and Vanya had hidden away the briefcase, just in case..

“Get your rags on, we’re going places,” she cheered in her best Allisonesqe manner when Five skulked into the kitchen in a particularly moody way. He stopped mid stride, squinting his eyes suspiciously.

“What are you up to, Vanya?”

“Nothing!” she lied badly and made her grin a little too enthusiastic. Five rolled his eyes and lurched over to the coffee machine. 

“Yeah right. You’re going to try and make me forget that we’ll have the house crowded with loud, bad mannered imbeciles by nightfall,” Five simply stated and poured himself a cup. Vanya threw her hands in the air.

“Alright, you’ve got me. But it’s not only because of that. I like spending time with you, and I’m afraid there will be less of that now when our brothers come home. There’s so much.. testosterone all over the place when we’re all together.”

“Better with just us girls then,” Five chimed in with just a smidge of sarcasm and downed the cup. She knew he struggled with the apparent changes to his body, and not to mention the ones that weren’t even visible to the naked eye.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just.. you’re more relaxed when it’s just us. You tend to flex all of your muscles and brain when you're around Diego and Luther, it’s like you’re trying to be the Alpha male or something. Klaus you seem to be alright with, but the other two..”

Five almost growled as he poured himself another cup. 

“I don’t… I don’t know how to behave around them, they walk around all burly and speak with burly voices, and I.. I had that. But now.. I know I’ve had four years to get used to this tweeb of a body, but it just doesn't suit me.” Five had that faraway look in his eyes as he struggled to find the words. 

“ I feel like a rottweiler trapped in a chihuahua’s body, no bite, just the bark left.. And now, with this whole.. thing in addition..” His gaze dropped together with Vanya’s heart as he looked down to the source of his greatest humiliation.

“How are they gonna react to this?!”

Vanya, having no answers to that, simply grabbed him by the hand.

“I don’t know,” she answered him sincerely: “ but I do know you need a haircut!” She ruffled his hair and let him nudge her back.

“So here’s the plan. Breakfast at Waldo’s, haircut at some under the radar barbershop, and then a stroll in the park with coffee, freezing our asses off on some random bench by the lake as the grand finale.” Five drew in a breath, and she watched him consider for a moment.

“Alright,” he agreed, a meek smile on his lips.

It was one of Vanya’s top five days in her entire life, and thankfully Five seemed to be enjoying her company as well. It was the simplicity of it all, doing sweet and simple mundane things, talking together about nothing particular, just enjoying the company of each other without any hidden agendas.

They had a delightful breakfast at Waldo’s basking in the late November sun, safely tucked behind the windows inside the cafe. She watched Five have his hair cut the precise 1,5 inches he instructed the barber and cherished how his boyish banter had everybody in the barbershop laugh more than once. He even grabbed her by the arm like a gentleman as they strolled down the park and bought horrible coffee at the food truck by the lake.

As they sat down on a freezing park bench he put his hand on top of hers and gave her one of those raew solemn looks of serenity.

“Thank you, Vanya. You always seem to know just what I need.” 

“Well, a girl’s gotta try..” Vanya murmured and leaned closer, resting her head against his shoulder.

“Anything for you, master Hargreeves.”

“Oh well, anything for you, Lady Hargreeves!” Five replied and put his arm around her shoulder. And then they sat there, for a cherished moment suspended in time and space.Vanya wished they could have just stayed in that moment. She had no desire to break up and go back to the chaos that was bound to unfold at nightfall.

As it were, the chaos that was Luther, Diego and Klaus was already unfolding when they returned from the park. Luther greeted them in the hallway, eyes peering with poorly hidden anxiety.

“Where have you been?!” he demanded, almost yanking them in from the street.

“Hey, relax!” Five put his hands up in front of him, immediately in defence mode.”We’ve just been out for a walk, ok?”

“With you looking like this?!” Luther gestured towards Five, making Vanya visibly cringe. She could feel the static energy already radiating from her brother. She stepped between them.

“Everything went according to plan at the cabin?” she asked Luther in an attempt to draw attention away from Five’s now clenched fists.

“I think so,” Luther answered, “but when we hauled ass back here we couldn’t find you anywhere.. I was afraid that we had failed somehow and… erased you.” At this he broke down and big fat tears started streaming down his cheeks.

“Oh, Luther,” Vanya murmured and tried to pull the huge mountain of a man in for a hug, silently hoping he wouldn’t choke her in return. (she had tried that once, she had been afraid to hug him since) Thankfully Luther just hugged her back, and even dragged Five into the embrace before he was able to escape his clutches. 

“I’m so glad you two are alive! We were so afraid we were messing up the timeline. When you kicked the bucket for a while back there, Five… I swear.. You had us all biting our cheeks!”

“Did Herb appear with a briefcase?” Five asked him, voice heavy with concern.

“Yup, only wanted to speak with you. And when we heard the sound of him leaving Vanya ran to your room, fearing you were going with him, and “poof” away you two went with the other briefcase.” Vanya could feel Five’s body relax and finally Luther let go of the awkward threesome hug. A shadow appeared in the doorway, complete with a snarky bite:

“Hey, look who finally decided to show up!” 

Ah, Diego never failed..

“We were just out walking, alright?!” Five snarled, pushing past everybody and stomped up the stairs.

“Moody Five!” Klaus chimed in as he joined them in the hallway.Vanya swallowed a silent moan as she watched Five disappear in a shimmer of blue. He hadn’t blinked once since the day at Griddy’s, but now, thirty seconds with his brothers was enough to make him tap into his powers again. Powers that were draining him too fast in his current condition.

“Guys, please.” She gave them all her most ardent stare and shuttled them over to the kitchen. 

“What’s up with Five?” Diego growled. “It’s like he’s pissed we’re alive!”

“That’s not true, and you know it!” Vanya told him sternly. ”He’s got a lot on his mind right now, that’s all.”

“Maybe if he told us some of it he might feel better, and we would understand where he was coming from,” Klaus muttered.

“He’s going to, it’s just hard for him to find the words, that’s all.” Vanya sighed.”You have a tendency to gang up on him.”

“What?! We don’t gang up on him, we just got home!” Luther squealed, looking mortified. 

“We believed you were dead! Well, excuse us for caring!” He looked like he was about to burst into tears again.

“I know that, Five knows that.” Vanya told him calmly. “There’s a reason Five is all nerves and bundles around you, even more than his usual self. Give him some time and some air, and he will tell you why he’s acting erratic.” Klaus’ face welled up with softness. 

“It’s about Allison isn’t it?” 

Vanya simply nodded.

The following morning Five decided he would simply spend the day in bed. No brothers would bother him in here, and if they had the nerve to step inside he would feel quite camouflaged under the bedspreads. But he soon felt guilty for avoiding them. They deserved to know what had happened to Allison, and if it hadn’t been for them and Vanya he wouldn’t be alive today. 

He had to find a way to manage his temper somehow. Maybe if he duct taped all of their mouths shut it would be easier for him to come clean with the whole Allison situation. He was afraid he would react on gut instinct and just blink out again. He’d already been up half the night puking his guts out because of his last gut reaction. This time some sort of cramp had started rolling through his body afterwards, starting in his lower back, then spreading all over his midsection and just making his entire stomach clench up like a vice. And as to add salt to the dish Allison was kicking up a storm, having him return everything he’d consumed that day into the toilet in loud gut wrenching retches. A look into the bathroom mirror told Five he looked as miserable as he felt. The bags under his eyes had returned and so had the scowl. 

“No more blinking for you, mister,” he told himself tiredly and left for the kitchen.

They all sat there waiting for him, and none said a word as he entered. Five hobbled over to the coffee machine, feeling four sets of eyes following his movements. When he sat down a moment later Vanya broke the ice.

“I’ve told the guys that you have something to tell them about Allison,” She told him carefully. “You take your time, tell them when you’re ready, and they’ve promised to be quiet and listen” Five could hear the impatient huffs of air drawn by both Luther and Diego, so his eyes darted over to Klaus who sat there with that soft smile of his lingering on his face.There couldn’t be a being on earth looking more innocent than Klaus. 

Five nodded towards Vanya, downed his coffee and sighed.

“Alright. It’s time you know.” The chairs of both Diego and Luther creaked as they leaned closer. Five looked down on his mug, turning it in his hands, running his fingers over the handle.

“When Allison and I were in the future we got trapped. I was shot and was too exhausted to rescue us back to 2023. With our backs up against the wall Allison decided to rumour me…” He was feeling the air dry out around him, waves of energy starting to grow as he was itching to jump, to get away from the situation. Apparently Vanya noticed, because she leaned over and grabbed his hand.

“It’s ok, Five.” Her voice, so soft and earnest. He wanted so badly to make a jump, to get out of here. Why was it so hard to just.. say it? But he remembered when he had confided in Vanya. He remembered the distrust in her voice, the disbelief in her face. He didn’t know if he could stomach that times three from his brothers. He let go of her hand, set the cup down, put his palms down on the table, trying to ground himself somehow before taking the plunge. 

“Allison is alive,” he told them, finally looking up and facing his brothers. He was thrown by the emotions radiating from all three of them. Then again.. Of course they were emotional. They’d been kept in the dark about Allison since he came back, they probably were half insane with worry about what had happened with her. 

“Where… is she?” Luther was already weeping, drying his eyes with those huge clumsy fingers of his. Luther and Allison, god their relationship had been anything but platonic the last years although they were pretending nothing was up. How would he react to suddenly having his secret love interest being turned into a baby?! Five looked up into the ceiling, steeling himself.

“Allison rumored me. Her intention was probably to rumour herself small enough so that I would manage to take her with me, and so to rumour herself big again when we arrived back here. But it backfired somehow, and I ended up 20 years into my old future and… lo and behold:”

He pointed his hands meekly towards his stomach:

“..I found myself pregnant with Allison.”

There, the ball was dropped. Five closed his eyes and waited. Silence. Silence for so long.. His eyes snapped open when he suddenly felt Luther’s heavy palm on top of his gut.

“Allison?” his brother’s voice was tiny and overwhelmed. “You in there?” Five could feel Allison respond to Luther’s voice, and by the look on his face so could he. Luther fell backwards and landed on his ass, eyes like marbles. 

“How.. is that possible?”

“Well, technically it aint,” Five sighed. “But here we are.”

“Oh my god, I’m going to be an uncle!” Klaus cheered.


	11. Always the goddamn hero

Diego always had a pet peeve with Five’s “saviour of the world”- complex, but this was an entirely new ballpark of insane, even for him. He watched in silent horror as Luther willingly embraced the batshit crazy idea of Allison somehow being lodged inside Five’s innards. His brain curled inwards when Klaus jubilantly cheered to the idea of becoming an uncle to his own sister, and he despaired as he saw Vanya silently embrace the situation with a gentle smile on her face. For a second his eyes interlocked with Five’s and that was when his blood really started to boil. There was this boyish fear in his eyes, and he looked away immediately, probably by the disgust in Diego’s eyes. Because that was what he was feeling. Disgust.

The whole situation was disgusting, perverted even. How was it even humanly possible?! Was Allison’s powers even strong enough to pull off a stunt like that, and why the hell would she do that to herself? And to FIVE, nonetheless? He watched how Five flinched awkwardly when Luther started to interact with his belly like it was some kind of portal of connection with Allison.

“You know, Five.. This is rich, even for you!” he growled and got to his feet. He felt kind of bad when he noticed Five looking kinda hurt, but he shook it off. He did what he was best at, storming off.

“Where are you going?” Vanya yelled after him, with her always goddamn gentle voice.

“I need air!” Diego barked and slammed the door after him. He was fed up with the lunacy.

Five was the second to leave the kitchen after Diego. He looked like someone had died, but kept silent.

“Five, just give him time, he’ll come around,” Vanya told him and tried to stop him as he pushed by. Five didn’t answer, and Vanya knew better than to push him further.

She turned around to the awkward presence of her remaining brothers, Klaus and Luther. Luther was still crying, still coming to terms with the fact that his not so secret girlfriend had been turned into an infant, and in the background Klaus was looking mighty thirsty. She swallowed a sigh and started to tidy up dirty dishes.

“Do you think she’s still.. Allison.. in there?” The question, so simple, yet so obvious. Still, it hadn’t even dawned on Vanya during her own coming to terms with Five’s predicament.

“I don’t know, Luther. But shouldn’t she be, though?”

“Yes, but will her memory be intact, will she remember.. her life?” Luther stuttered the words.Vanya stopped dead in her tracks. She had never thought about that. Would Allison be born like a blank slate, or would she be born with all her memories intact the same way Five’s memory had been intact when he was warped into the body of his younger self? Vanya silently pondered what would be worst, to be born anew, or born with all your memories intact but into a body too frail and small to help you express what you were trying to communicate.

She sat down, head in her hands as all the new questions came crashing down like a tidal wave.

“I’ll go get some booze,” Klaus told the room, and left the kitchen as well.

_____

Back in his room Five did something he seldom did as a child, but he seemed to do more and more as an adult, ironically. He curled up in bed, closed his eyes and tried to shut it all out. He tried to shut out Luther’s grief, Klaus’ naive acceptance and Diego’s disgust. He tried to shut out the movements from Allison tumbling beneath his heart and he tried to shut out the thought about his niece who would have to grow up without a mother. He vaguely remembered Herb’s order, ordering him to hide somewhere in the timeline, coming back to this time only when Alison had grown up again. He would’ve been an old man of 97 years by then. And there was no way he could raise her and train her to become exactly her old self again. How could he raise her to be a mother to a child she didn’t remember she gave birth to, how would she rebond with a family she no longer knew? No, his gut was telling him going back to their timeline now was the right thing to do, although it was the lesser of two evils.

There was a soft knock on his door, and Five ignored it, pushed away the sound with everything else. More knocking, a little louder this time. Then creaking hinges and someone entering. It wasn’t Vanya, this person moved and smelled differently.. Klaus.

“I want to be alone,” Five mumbled, not looking up from his nest of self pity.

“I know, but I need company,” Klaus answered him matter of factly. To Five’s horror he could feel the weight of Klaus topple over into the bed, and lay down behind him.

“Pretend I’m not here,” Klaus murmured into his ear and slid his arm around his waist, making Five tense up instantly.

“Klaus.. I don’t. Want. Company!”

“Sshhh, I’m not here,” Klaus whispered, already, to Five’s astonishment, half asleep. Seconds later there was actual snoring. Five closed his eyes as some sort of panic attack was starting to build up in his chest. But just as he was about to blink out of there he got caught up in the rise and swell of Klaus’ breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Not a worry in the world. Inhale. Exhale. Somehow, Five slowly picked up on his breathing, unconsciously copying it. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale Exhale. His muscles started to loosen up, his panic attack evaporating, his body slowly relaxing, his breathing parroting Klaus’s.

When Five woke up six hours later he was still curled into Klaus’ embrace. Klaus was no longer asleep. But was still happily playing the role of “big spoon”. For how long? Five wasn’t going to ask.

“I had a nice nap, how was yours?” Klaus let go of Five and rolled over to his back and pulled his arms to rest behind his neck.

“It wasn’t half bad, actually,” Five confessed, much to his astonishment. He tried to roll over to his back, but ended up struggling like a turtle caught on his shell.

“Here, grab on, brother.” Klaus offered him an arm and Five, grudgingly grabbed on to haul himself over. He ended up on his other side, stomach poking Klaus’ hip.

“Oh for shit’s sake!” Five growled and flopped over to his back and put his arms behind his head with some erratic movements. He needed a few minutes to catch his breath, then tried to look relaxed like his brother. Klaus kept calm and waited. He was like a cat basking in warmth really, and Five was the fire he was latching on to.

They lay there in silence for a few minutes, Five feeling strangely calm.

“Diego back yet?” Five finally dared ask.

“Don’t know,” Klaus answered. “Luther was going outside to look for him. Let him sulk for a while, he’ll come around.”

“I don’t know…” Five hated the uncertainty in his voice, but he dared let the defences down a little with Klaus. He knitted mittens for christmas, for christ sake.

“He looked pretty fed up with me.”

“Pffff, I bet he’s only sour because it wasn’t him who had to do it. Could you imagine Diego in your shoes?! He would probably lob around and demand foot rubs and chocolate, and run around and toss knives at bad guys at night while complaining about his back!” Klaus snickered wholeheartedly and nudged Five in the ribs.

“You think?” Five’s doubt only encouraged Klaus.

“And after Allison was born, oh my god! The stories about the birth! The pain he would have endured, the blood, the horror! God, we would all end up scarred for life!” Five chuckled a little, and Klaus rolled towards him with a smirk.

“You really took one for the team, Five! You saved us all from super moody Diego XXL!” Five returned the smirk and was about to answer when he instead tensed up. A grunt escaped his lips together with a surprised scowl before he was able to hide his discomfort.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Klaus went from mellow to worry in a moment's notice.

“Nothing, it’s just Allison kicking up a shitstorm in there,” Five wheesed through a clenched jaw. She was really making an effort of hitting every soft spot on his inside.

“Whoah, calm down, will yah?” He tried to rub his sides, but it was like having a wild boar running loose inside him.

“Five, can I try something?” Klaus asked and sat up.

“Sure,” Five wheesed, too preoccupied with breathing at the moment. What was happening?

Klaus leaned over Five, put his hands on top of Five’s stomach and leaned closer.

“Allison? It’s me, Klaus!”

Five’s eyes widened as the movements inside him stopped instantly.

“Oh my god, I think she heard you!”

“Of course she did, didn’t you Allison?” Klaus looked at him with a huge grin and put his ear down towards Five’s waist.

“Hush little Allison don’t say a word, Klaus is gonna buy you a big lemon turd!” They both waited in hushed silence, and both jumped as Allison answered with a fierce shove.

“Ouch!” Five groaned, while Klaus jubilantly nudged her back.

“You little tramp! Hiding in brother Five? Now that’s cheating.” Five marveled as he felt how Allison responded to every word and every touch Klaus communicated through his flesh. That _had_ to be proof the old Allison was inside him, he felt certain of it.

“I guess it will be a few years until we can go out drinking again, girlfriend,” Klaus mourned and ran his fingers in circles over Five’s sweater vest. Five felt her turn slowly inside him, evidently with full focus on their brother’s voice and touch. Then Klaus’ face tensed and his eyes widened for a moment.

“Five?” Klaus turned toward him, eyes brimming with tears.

“Allison tells me to tell you she’s fine, and that she loves you!”


	12. I see unborn people

Klaus’ “gift” of communicating with the dead had always been a most unwelcome one. He had learned to manage it better during the last years, to such intent that he was able to block out any unwelcome voices. Now he was learning that his abilities to communicate with the dead also seemed to stretch out to powers communicating with the unborn.. that was news to him.

He was floored when Allison pushed through and was able to not exactly talk to him, but she was.. emoting to him and he picked up the essence of what she was feeling. The reaction from Five had been one for the history books. He had actually cried. Big and ugly, clinging on to him for dear life cried. Ten minutes later he pretended it never happened of course, but Klaus wore the tear stains to prove it. And Five’s pointy shoulders suddenly seemed less tense than they had in years.

For Five the message from Allison ment more than he even dared to admit for himself. All the blame and all the shame, the fear of her being trapped inside him and suffering was now taken away from his conscience and that made the load so much easier to carry. He still felt bad of course, for Luther and Allison in the way that their relationship had taken a new turn, and he felt heartbroken for Claire who would enter her teenage years without a mother to relate to. Five being Five he had a future plan lingering in his brain. It was a long shot, but it kept his mind and hope busy as he waited for Diego to head back home.

Three days after his nosedive of a pregnancy reveal Five was fed up with Diego’s mansulking. He reckoned he had returned to his old “batcave”, the boiler room back at the local gym. 72 hours after the truth about Allison was revealed Five hasardly climbed down the fire escape and snuck out. Him and Diego were having words!

He took a cab downtown and strolled into the gym where the owner, Al, was currently yelling at two towering meat mountains to hit harder at each other.

“Diego?” Five asked him casually and ignored the stare he was given in return.

“Sure chubby, at the back,” Al answered him and waved him off like an irksome fly. Five silently pondered how many different ways he was able to kill Al before him even noticing while skulking off in the offered direction.

Five made sure Diego was alone and blinked in. He wanted to catch his brother by surprise so he wouldn’t have the chance to storm off again.

He was spat out directly above Diego’s desk and landed flat on his back with a screech. It seemed gravity pulled differently at his body lately, he never managed to get his landings straight.

“What the hell, Five!?” Diego’s reaction was priceless, and Five would probably have enjoyed it if it wasn’t for him being busy curling up in pain at the moment.

“Get off my desk!” Diego growled and showed him in the side so Five ended up on the floor with an agonished groan.

“Oh fuck!” Diego seemed to remember the precious cargo Five was holding:

“Here, let me help you!”

Five brushed him off violently.

“You’ve helped… enough, thank you.. very much!”

“Why the hell are you blinking in like that, I might have stabbed you, you moron!” Diego was huffing and puffing like he always did when caught off guard.

“Well, as long as you keep storming off like a hot tempered teenager every time I try to talk to you I’ve not much choice, have I?!” Five spat and tried to sit up. His spine was not having it, and he rolled over to his side. Fuck it all, what effect did his surprise entrance have when he ruined it by laying here all crippled up. Diego went around the desk and pulled Five roughly up to his feet by the shoulders of his schoolblazer.

“You wanted to talk, then talk!” Not much sympathy from that end. Five realised his lip was bleeding and dried it off with the back of his hand, at the same time throwing Diego daggers.

“Fine. Sit down!” he growled.

“I’m standing, _you_ sit down!” Diego spat back.

“I’m standing too!” Five snarled.

“Fine!” Diego barked, glaring.

Five took a deep breath.

_Anger management. Calm down. Kick Diego in the nuts. No, calm!_

“Why are you avoiding me?” Straight to the core, no bullshit!

_Alphamale, meet your daddy!_

Diego flashed that look of disgust as his eyes darted downwards, but he kept silent.

“Allison says hi by the way. We found out Klaus can communicate with the unborn as well as the dead, but how would you know, hiding away here like a coward!”

“I’m not a coward!” Diego growled, both hands rolling into fists. Then his posture softened for a second.

“What do you mean Klaus can speak with the unborn. Allison is speaking to him?!”

“Yeah, or emoting or whatever. She’s apparently doing fine inside me, and... she’s not blaming me for anything, unlike certain others...”

“I never blamed you for this?” Diego suddenly looked unsure.

“I just, I just… It’s weird!”

“No shit, moron?! How the hell do you think I feel?” Five snapped back incredulously, eyes and cheeks suddenly burning.

“You think I wake up in the morning thinking "Vuhu, another day to be _pregnant_ with my own sister" ?! What kind of fucked up person do you believe I am?!”

“I… I never thought about that..” Diego was starting to look more and more unsure, shifting his weight between his feet.

“I just.. thought it was another one of your “Five valiantly saves his family without concern for himself”- moves. It’s getting kind of old, you know. You should start trusting in us to help you out too once in a while.”

“I trusted you with both my shame and predicament three nights ago,” Five told him silently. Diego’s gaze faltered.

“Not my best bro move, I’ll admit that,” Diego mumbled and rubbed his neck.

An awkward silence settled in the room, and Five finally sat down to rest his battered back. He really ought to kick down on the blinking these days.. He closed his eyes momentarily and tried to silence out the ringing inside his head. White noise was filling his brain and making it hard to focus on anything. He got startled when a heavy hand clamped around his shoulder. There was no more disgust in Diego’s voice.

“Come on, Five. Let’s go home.”

________________

The following week Five almost settled into some sort of comfortable routine. The squabbling with his siblings was kept down to a bare minimum, probably thanks to some heavy lobbying by Vanya, and he started to feel well enough to move about again without hobbling around like an old man. Vanya was pretty strict with him, revoking any blinking rights inside the house, as if she could stop him if she tried.. But he was fed up with the hours of misery following one single blink as it was right now and decided to keep off teleporting unless it was a matter of life and death.

Luther was nagging him to eat healthy so his marshmallow sandwiches were reduced to secret midnight snacks when the rest of the house was sleeping. Sleeping.. well, that was one more thing he was doing less and less of. He was almost hoping Klaus would come sneaking back into his bed to “power nap” him. But the family’s medium seemed to keep a respectful distance to Five’s gut lately after their first seance with Allison, and Five didn’t blame him. He had been bawling like a full blown toddler and ruined Klaus’ silk shirt…

Sleeping was becoming an intolerable struggle, the neverending task of finding a comfortable position where nothing came into a pinch somehow. Sleeping on his back he couldn’t breathe, sleeping on his side he got heart palpitations and heartburn. Sleeping in a sitting position his back hurt. And then there was the excessive peeing! On the rare occasion he found a somewhat tolerable position where he also was allowed to breathe, he managed to rest for approximately thirty minutes before he had to go and empty his bladder.

But he was slowly growing accustomed with having his loud, extroverted siblings hovering over him in addition to Vanya and he was no longer itching to make a run for it.

Lolled in this fake security he was taken totally by surprise the day Luther came jumping into the library with a jubilant cheer.

“I found mom’s old ultrasound machine!”

It took all of his power of mind to not teleport to the moon..

Thirty minutes later Five found himself stretched out on an examination table in Reginald Hargreeves’ old lab, surrounded by excited siblings and Luther’s clumsy hands.

“I think if I turn this button on…” Luther mumbled, more to himself than anyone else:

“..and if I flick this switch..” A screen in the background came alive with a white dots flickering on a black background.

“And then I use this..probe..” Five almost jumped off the table by the word “probe”.

“Relax, It’s to be used on your outside,” Luther whined and rolled his eyes. “All I need for you to do is to pull up your shirt and vest.”

_Oh, so that’s all…_

Five hesitated. He felt strangely private about the new and distorted shape of his torso.

“It’s ok, Five. You don’t need to do it,” Vanya told him calmly and instantly shot down the impatient huffs escaping their brothers.

“Oh what the hell..” Five sighed and pulled up his shirt to reveal a perfectly rounded stomach.

“Wow, it’s so.. smooth and shiny, and.. orby!” Klaus marveled, reaching out to touch, but getting his fingers instantly flicked away by Five.

“Ouch, that looks tight!” Diego sympathised and received a stern glare from Vanya.

“Now let’s see, where’s the lube,” Luther mused and hummed for himself while searching around in the equipment set before him. Five tensed up so fiercely he was sure his asshole made a sound as it snapped shut in terror.

“For the probe!” Luther hurriedly added, only ending up throwing gasoline to the fire by the terrified look on Five's face.

“For the examination probe I will be running up and down your belly, on the _outside_!” he snapped when he suddenly seemed to become aware of the glares from all his siblings, including the fetus currently inside Five. Five moaned internally and wished it all to be over with.

The machine Luther was handling, quite poorly, was set to send out high-frequency sound waves, which in turn would reflect off body structures. A computer would then receive the waves and render them to create a picture of what was lurking inside Five. If they were lucky they would get a sneak preview of baby Allison.

Luther added the gel to Five’s gut and slowly ran the probe up and down his skin. Five decided it was best to tuck his arms away behind his neck to keep him from yanking the probe out of his brother’s clumsy hands. It was adamant he was reduced to a pile of nerves while searching for his now turned infant girlfriend, so Five granted him some leeway. After some feeble searching Luther let out a small noise when the flickering blobs on the screen suddenly turned into the unmistakable shape of a hand.

“Look!” he cried out and pointed at the screen where a small hand was moving softly in fluid motions towards what Diego immediately recognised as a tiny nose. Luther adjusted the resolution and there was a simultaneous gasp through the room as the perfect profile of a baby’s head appeared on the screen in flickering white on black. Five was aghast. There on the screen his tiny impostor was revealed, and made real at once. Broadcasting from his inside this living being was projected before his eyes like a shockwave of both pain and delight at once. He became acutely aware of his display of human emotions and dabbed his cheeks dry with light panic. No one around him had seemed to notice though, they were all busy mopping their own eyes and cheeks.

There was a light push to his inside and everybody jumped and cheered excitedly at the same time as they watched the same movement unfold on the screen.

“Do it again, Allison!” Klaus urged and they all watched the tiny hand repeat the movement.

“Look at Five’s stomach!” Luther gaped, and now their combined focus turned towards Five’s waist. They all saw the movements, like tiny ripples running over his skin.

“That’s our Allison, putting on a show!” Klaus cooed, patting Five’s stomach.

The Hargreeves standing around Five seemed to be hypnotised by the movements unfolding in front of their eyes, and more hands shot forward, touching Five’s skin. Without asking, without waiting for an invite. Without any consideration of the man on display. The only one who was currently keeping her hands off him was Vanya. Something inside Five’s brain suddenly snapped.

“All right, that does it!” he growled. Five shoved everyone currently touching him away and flopped down to his feet.

”I need some coffee.” There were muffled complaints following his footsteps, but he chose to ignore them. He was already feeling like a freakshow, he wasn’t putting on an extra number to please his brothers.


	13. Surprise visit

The next day Five felt a bit calmer in his skin again, waking to the first morning of december and the smell of Klaus burning something down in the kitchen, cocoa by the stench of it. He more or less shoehorned into his beloved uniform, tied his tie immaculately and noticed that even his hair was on fleek. Evading his own ridiculous silhouette in the mirror he went downstairs with all intentions of behaving as the nicest version of his 62 year old self. Then Five entered the kitchen where Klaus was hogging his favorite coffee mug with something that smelled like burned oil.

“Hey, that’s mine, asshole!” he scowled as he grudgingly settled for a boring mug with the picture of a cow on it. He wanted his Doctor Who mug back.

“Relax tiny old man bro, you can have it back when I’m finished,” Klaus answered him smugly and took a sip. He looked like he had poured actual oil into the cup as he had a taste, made a small noise and discreetly put the mug down with a poorly hidden frown.

“So, how’s it going? Allison ready to come out yet?” Klaus suddenly asked, all sweet and innocent.

“How the hell should I know, you’re the one who’s “emoting” with her!” Five bit back, slurping coffee angrily.

“Well, you’re not letting me anywhere near that temple of yours, do you?” Klaus replied sweetly, grinning widely. Seething Five bit back every scorn he’d ever served another human being, downed his coffee and inwardly ordered Klaus to go to hell, before he left the kitchen and went over to the library for some peace and quiet.

December first.. It was closing in on the finish line, that much he knew, and felt as gravity was taking a firmer pull to his body as his condition progressed. Two weeks had passed since he dropped down from the future, but it felt like ten. Time traveling sure had a way to mess with your mind.

That would mean that Allison had been gone for four weeks by now.

Five tried his best to curl up in his favorite chair, but his stomach got in the way. Finally he settled with his legs propped on a footstool, warming his feet by the fireplace. He could feel Allison doing her morning gymnastics right under where he was resting his book. It seemed she found great pleasure at nudging everything that came in contact with his gut these days.

“Yeah, yeah. Settle down, will ya?” he sighed, but without the malice that usually painted his voice.

He had no idea of how long he’d been sitting there, or how long he had been napping for that matter when the doorbell rang. He ignored it, and closed his eyes again. The doorbell continued to chime.

“Is anybody going to get that?!” he yelled, but no one answered. He clenched his teeth together as he hauled himself out of the chair.

“It’s probably that imbecile Klaus who’s locked himself out again!”

Five marched over to the entrance and yanked the door open, expecting Klaus with a puerile expression and juvenile excuses. Five already had his mouth open, ready to give him the scolding of a lifetime and nearly lost his shit when he realized that the person on the doorstep wasn’t his brother.

It was his twelve year old niece, Claire.

Five felt his jaw drop.

“Claire! What are you doing here?!” he gulped, instantly sweating bullets. Claire arched her eyebrow as she had a look at him.

“Wow uncle, you’re fat!”

Five smiled awkwardly as she strolled by him and went inside.

“Well, you have grown quite a bit yourself, tiny human,” he answered as he closed the door behind her. Where the hell was Vanya and the others?! Then he realised there was something really off with the whole situation of a twelve year old suddenly standing on the doorstep unannounced. Florida was a flight away.

“Where’s Patrick?” he asked her as he followed her into the kitchen where she promptly went to the refrigerator to find something to drink.

There was a sheepish look on her face.

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” she confessed.

“What? How can he not know you’ve booked a flight and come all the way out here by yourself? you're a minor!” Five screeched and shot his arms into the air.

“He thinks I’m on a sleepover with my girlfriend Melissa,” Claire answered, a smug grin now growing on her face. She was her mother’s daughter alright!

“Claire, when he finds out you will be in a shitload of trouble!” Five wheesed, sweating for real now and grabbing on to the back of the nearest chair. They really didn’t need Allison’s ex breathing down their necks in the current situation.

Claire just shrugged her shoulders, looking down at her soda.

“I need to speak with mom about something. Where is she?”

And there it was. The million dollar question. Five sat down, unable to stand any longer.

“I’m.. afraid she isn’t available right now..”He pushed the words out of his mouth, and felt Allison getting upset inside him. Was she aware Claire was there??

“It’s important,” Claire said: “I’ll just wait until she comes home.”

Where the HELL was Vanya and the others?! Five was now freaking out big time, and his stress was infecting his tiny impostor as well, having him flinch in discomfort as she was throwing a fit inside him.

“Uncle Five?” He was suddenly dreadfully aware that Claire had turned her attention back towards him.

“Mhmm?” He smiled awkwardly, grinding his teeth as his ribs were graced with a tiny elbow.

“Are you sick or something? You don’t look so good.”

“Nah, fit as a fiddle,” he tried, discreetly dabbing his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket as he reached for the blasted cow mug.

She threw him a glare and then started laughing the way teenagers do when they know they are being lied to by a grown up.

“Uncle.” Her voice had that patronising vibe Allison had when she was not having it anymore.

“I’m not eight years old anymore, I’m twelve. And a half!” she hastily added to gather weight behind her pun.

“I’m fed up with grownups treating me like a child, and you’ve always been honest with me. Why are you lying to me when it’s obvious something is really really wrong with you? I mean, look at you!” she exasperated gesturing towards him. Five felt his posture sag in defeat.

“I’m just really into Happy Meals at McDonalds lately,” he lied, already knowing he was losing the battle.

“Alright, where’s mom then?” she asked him, defiance now coloring her high pitched voice. This was going sideways and fast.. Five felt his hands starting to tremble and the itch to blink out of the kitchen and into his room was growing mighty tempting. He rolled his fingers into fists and closed his eyes. No. He wasn’t going to escape like a coward as when he had tried to face his siblings. He was now sitting face to face with the single most important person in Allison’s life. There was no way he would forgive himself if he flaked out now. He drew a deep breath and met Claire’s gaze.

“Remember your mom and I were going on a mission about four weeks ago? She talked to you on the phone the night before we left and you made plans to celebrate christmas together in Florida this year. She was so happy when she hung up the phone and couldn’t wait until christmas.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Claire answered him calmly: “And I haven’t heard from her since.”

“Is that why you came all the way here?” Five asked her cautiously.

“No. I need to talk to her about something, something personal,” Claire answered, throwing her eyes down to goggle at her soda.

“Maybe I can help?” Five tried, desperately hauling for time in hope one of his siblings would grace them with their presence anytime yesterday.

“No. It’s a girl problem,” she mumbled, picking at the tab on her soda can. “So where is she, can you tell me that at least?”

Five buried his face in his hands, moaning internally. He really didn’t want to have this conversation!

“As I told you we were going on a mission,” he continued, looking up into the ceiling as he was steeling himself for the continuation.

“We were on the verge of being captured, and your mom.. to save us both, she rumored me to make us jump through time. It worked, kind of, but it also backfired immensely. We got caught twenty years into the future, and your mom was..” his voice was shattering and he realised he was starting to stutter. He could feel her eyes on him now, felt how terror grew inside her as she started dreading the worst.

“What happened with mom?” she sniveled, tears on the verge of erupting as she was gripping the table with both hands.

“I was too tired to carry us both through time, so she rumored herself small for me to carry with her,” Five stuttered, desperately searching for the right words to explain the impossible.

“So what, you did a “Honey I shrunk the kids” and mom got really small and you lost her?!” Claire spat at him incredulously.

“What?! No, I didn’t lose her,” Five snapped, nerves getting the better of him before minding the actual child situated in front of him.

“She’s inside me.”

“Inside you?!” Her anger went over to mild confusion: “What do you mean inside you?!”

“Remember what happened to me when I went back in time the first time?” Five asked her calmly.

“Yes, you went from grandpa to grandpaboy,” Claire answered him, a frown now growing on her forehead. “Are you saying that mom has transformed into a girl my age?!”

“She regressed even further, Claire. She regressed into a... fetus.”

“So.. Mom is a _fetus.._ And she is inside… _you.”_ It was weird hearing his niece mapping together the pieces as some crazy puzzle while her mind was screaming at her about the lunacy of it all.

“But.. you are a boy??”

“Well, there were some technical changes added to my physique as your mom rumored me..”

“So you’re a girl now?” Claire continued to push, and Five was feeling more and more awkward.

“No, still a boy..man, but with some adjustments downstairs..”

Claire stood up and came over to where he was seated and desperately was trying to hide the swollen waist that suddenly was getting all the attention from his niece. She sat down beside him and poked him in the side.

“So you are saying, that inside you:” she poked him again: “is my mom, and that she is now a fetus?” Another poke. Five’s mouth was but a thin line as he answered her.

“Yes.”

He was biting back the urge to tell her to stop. Each jab by her finger was a little bit fiercer than the last.

“No wonder dad won’t let me come visit more often!” she scoffed and got to her feet. He could feel her little pubescent frown at him as she backed away and went over to the refrigerator again. She returned moments later with a bucket of Ben and Jerry’s and a spoon. She gave him a cocky glare as she flipped the lid off the ice cream.

“Come on then, uncle Five. Prove it!”

“How the hell am I gonna prove it?! She’s inside me, it’s not like I can… give birth on command or anything!?” Five snapped as he pushed back and got to his feet. He hesitated for a moment, then walked over to her and held out his hand. Claire flinched and backed away from him.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to convince you your mom is inside me,” Five told her calmly: “Now can I borrow your hand for a moment?” She hesitantly held out her hand and let him guide her palm down towards the towering middle of his gut.

“Push down here, and your mom will push back. She already knows you are here, she’s raving inside me.” Five let go of her hand and only hoped hers would hang on. It did. There was an awkward moment where both of them just stood there in silence, but finally she pushed her palm towards his stomach. She was instantly rewarded with a shove back from Five’s inside.

“That’s the weirdest shit ever!” she gaped and traced the movements with her fingers.

“So mom, is a baby now? And you.. have to give birth to her or something?” she added, frowning.

“Something like that, yeah. So yay, me!” Five sighed, making a fake jubilant cheer and waved his arms a little.

“You guys have been doing lots of crazy shit, but this..!” Claire started. Then her face started to droop and Five, shit, knew what was coming next.

She started to cry. It was the hail of tears, the teenage version of crying that involved snot, wailing and grimaces. And before Five knew it she had thrown herself at him and was embracing him, sort of, while snivelling inarticulate words into his gut.

He patted her back stiffly, not knowing how to comfort a hysterical tween.

“I have a plan to make her herself again, I just don’t know if it will work yet,” he mumbled, discreetly trying to breathe as her clawlike little arms clamped on with a remarkable fierceness.

She looked up, face raw with emotion but with some sort of hope now lit in her eyes.

“You can fix her?” she whimpered.

“I hope so, Claire.”

“Because I really need to speak to her!” she snivelled and dried her eyes with her hand.

“You know.. I’m not mom, or not good with girl problems, but why don’t you give me a go? I can be your girl problem’s confiance until your mom is back and can take care of business?” He ruffled her hair a little, suddenly feeling a little confident there wasn’t possible to screw up any more than he already had.

“So, what is it you need to talk to your mom about?” He was Five Hargreeves, genius and time traveler, he could do a light girl problem conversation with his niece.

“I’m having my first period and I feel awkward talking with dad about it. I want mom,” Claire sniffed, drying her nose. Five’s confidence plummeted into the cellar within a heartbeat.

_SHIT!_

“Oh.. Maybe we'll save that one for auntie Vanya...” He rubbed his neck and swallowed a panicked urge to blink away, yet again.

It was late afternoon when Vanya returned to the Hargreeves Mansion. She’d been out on a secret mission, buying a pram for baby Allison, and now she was hoping to smuggle it inside without Five noticing. He was usually at his room or in the library at this time, taking a nap or sulking, so there were good odds she would succeed.

She snuck into the entrance hall, listened, found the area quiet and dragged the pram inside, ran silently over to the cupboard under the stairs and wheeled it inside.

“Sorry Harry Potter,” she whispered and chuckled over her own lame joke before she shut the door. Mission accomplished! Five would never stumble over it in there, and if he was to, there was no crime in buying a cute pram, was there? The mansion was unusually quiet for being filled to the rim with testosterone for the time being. Diego was probably out vigilanting a little, but where was Klaus and Luther? They were usually around at this time. The missing sound of Five wasn’t unheard of at this time of the afternoon, she expected to find him with his nose inside a book of something mathematical. It was brain food for Five, and cyrillic letters to Vanya..

She ventured into the kitchen and solved the first part of the puzzle. Luther had left a note on the table. “Out drinking with Diego and Klaus, don’t wait up.” She felt a cringe deep into her bones as she read it. Klaus was a recovering drug addict with a sip of booze now and then, which was a slippery slope to say the least. Then there was Diego.. She silently begged Luther to have the foresight to confiscate Diego’s knives before they left. He was rather trigger snappy when he was drinking. And then there was Luther. Big, lovable, goofy Luther, with a heart as big as his chest, and perhaps not a brain to match. How he was holding on during all this turmoil with Five and Allison was a riddle. Sure, sometimes he had an almost tender look to him as he watched Five and the impossible promise of Alison being carried inside him, but he was also broody, moody and irrational. How he would act if he got home amped up on booze tonight was anyone's guess. She figured she would stay close to Five just in case.

The library was empty and the fire there long gone out, so Vanya figured he was hiding in his bedroom. As she was halfway up the stairs the phone started ringing and she ran down to answer it. In the other and Allison’s ex Patric was having some kind of panic attack, it seemed.

“I need to speak to Allison, _now!”_

“I’m sorry, Allison isn’t able to come to the phone right now, she’s away… on a mission,” Vanya lied, badly.

“Ok, Vanya, it’s Vanya, right? My daughter’s missing and I think she’s run away to visit her mom. If Allison has put her up to this I swear to god...”

“Hey, relax!” Vanya cut him off before he had the chance to insult his sister further.

“Allison would never do that. And if Claire should suddenly show up on our doorstep unannounced you’d be the first to know!”

“So she’s not there?” Patrick’s voice was now reaching the peak of hysteria.

“Well, I just came home, and I haven’t been all over the house yet, but I’ll have a look around to be sure, ok?”

There was some hysterical rambling from Patrick’s end and he hung up. Vanya rolled her eyes as she hung up on her end, but instantly felt bad. He was concerned about his and Allison’s daughter, her niece. He was in his full right to be hysterical. But to immediately come to the conclusion that she had jumped on the first flight here, was farfetched to say the least.

Vanya decided she would go check with Five just in case Claire had called earlier that day, giving some clue as to where she had gone. She could hear Five’s old TV set as she approached his door and stalled slightly. The television was more of a dust collector than anything else, always had been, as Five preferred reading to TV any day. Perhaps he wanted the company of voices as he was studying tonight?

A soft knock to his door was left unanswered and she hesitated for a moment before she pushed the door open. She wasn’t prepared for the sight her eyes caught onto as she entered the dimly lit room. There, huddled close together like otters on Five’s tiny boy sized bed were Five and Claire, sleeping. Five was propped up against the bedrest, head lolled to the side and one arm slumped over Claire’s shoulders, while Claire was using Five as some sort of pillow, head resting on top of his stomach.

After the first internal _“AAAAAAW”_ Allison’s mind went:

_FUUUUUUCK!!!_

Now she had to call Patrick back after all.

Five had convinced Claire that Vanya would be the best choice for discussing pads or tampons and heavy flow days, as he had no clue whatsoever what Claire was talking about. Feeling absolutely useless he had offered her movie night with popcorn while they waited for Vanya to come home. Claire had accepted the offer and ended up invading his personal space as she immediately scooted as close to him as she could as they climbed into the only furniture in Five’s room that somehow fitted two persons, Five’s bed.

She was the first of them to fall asleep, not even halfway through an old silent movie, and Five silently marveld as he watched her sleep. He held her as close as he did Delores in their days, and it felt comfortable and safe. He wouldn’t blame her if she had run screaming for the hills after their encounter in the kitchen, but after the first initial shock had subsided she hugged him so hard he choked up inside.

There she was, twelve years old and accepting the whole “Mom is now an unborn baby inside my adoptive uncle that is indeed a 62 year old grumpy virgin trapped inside a seventeen year old boy’s body”- situation like a champ! Not that she knew about the virgin part, or ever would, but it was amazing nonetheless.

He only hoped he would be able to keep his promise about transforming Allison back into her old self..

Five had no idea of how long he had been out. The first thing to enter his field of view when he suddenly awoke from a most welcome nap was Vanya. She on the other hand looked livid. Her glare was piercing, even in the dimly lit room. She gestured towards the still sleeping Claire with both hands, back to Five and signed “idiot!” towards him.

Five signed “WHAT?!” back at her.

“She just showed up,” he wheezed: “What should I do, toss her ass out?!”

“Maybe call her D.A.D?!” Vanya muttered under her breath. “He’s beside himself with worry about her!”

“Well, I sort of had a more pressing matter to address!” Five whispered, nodding towards the child sleeping on top of him. Vanya fell silent, a quaint look of embarrassment washing over her.

“You told her about.. Allison?” she finally whispered.

Five nodded, looking away.

Patrick took the news about Claire’s whereabouts as well as one could expect. He was elated his daughter had reappeared in good health, he was frantic about the fact that she had traveled from Florida to Indianapolis all alone, and he was erratic about the fact that Allison wasn’t there to take care of her when she first travelled 900 miles to be with her. Vanya calmly explained to him that Allison was away on a secret mission and could not be blamed for not being at home just in case her daughter would run away from home. She offered to chaperone Claire back to Florida, but he was not having it. He would book a ticket to the first possible flight out there as soon as he hung up the phone.

All she was allowed to do was to follow Claire to the airport when he later rang her the details.

As Vanya was hanging up the phone Five was walking downstairs, wiping the sleep out of his eyes.  
“Claire?” she asked him warily.

“Still sleeping,” he answered and shrugged his shoulders. “How did it go with her dad?”

“As well as could be expected, I think,” Vanya sighed and rubbed her face. He’ll be taking the first flight over, I’m to follow Claire to the airport at nine am tomorrow morning.”

“What?! She’s not even allowed to stay for a day or two?” Five barked incredulously. “She needs some time with..” his voice trailed off as he stared down at his waist.

“Never mind.” He shuffled his way towards the kitchen.

Vanya followed him with a gnawing sensation she had forgotten something important.

“Sit down, I’ll make you a coffee,” she told him and watched him hobble over to the nearest chair by the kitchen table. She knew he could go into labour any day now, and by the looks of him he was painfully aware of said fact himself.

“Decaf please, I’ve been getting some nasty heartburns lately,” he grumbled as he loosened the tie around his neck. As she worked on his coffee she noticed him picking up a note on the kitchen table.

_FUCK! Luther, Diego and Klaus on a bender!_

She watched Five’s brow furrow in annoyance.

“Vanya.. Have you read this?” He waved the note in her general direction.

Vanya sighed as she nodded.

“Yes. Found the note when I was looking for you.”

“Well, what are we gonna do about it?” Five had that determined look about him that never bode well if you voted against him.

“What do you mean, there’s not much we can do about it?” Vanya protested as she handed him the coffee. Five gave her a glare and a noisy snuffle of indignation.

“We have Claire to consider here, you really want to expose her to the drunken trio of imbecile uncles?!” he scoffed and sent his coffee splattering all over the table as he shrugged in exasperation.

Vanya hadn’t thought about that. Her mind had been preoccupied with how an over the top crapulent Luther would engage with Five. How he would react to pregnant Five AND Allison’s daughter Claire at the same time was something she feared could be similar to a very bad case of Paradox Psychosis.

“Claire can’t see them drunk, Vanya,” Five urged, actual distress now painting his features as he scrambled to his feet. “I need to find them.”

Vanya couldn’t help but admire the assertion her brother showed as he started to tighten his tie and make sure his uniform was up to par.

“Oh no you don’t!” Vanya told him calmly. “If anyone is going on a wild goose chase to find them it’ll be me. You’ll stay here, with Claire.”

“What? No, I’ll, I’ll..” Hectic roses were already growing on his cheeks as he seemed to be searching for the right words.

“Five. You have Allison to consider. You’re in no state to go out gallivanting in search of our brothers when there’s a valid chance you might go into labour any time now. You need to stay here, and you need to look after Claire in case she wakes up.”

Five’s jaw tensed up, but he kept silent. The closest thing to him ever confessing she was right

Five went back upstairs to his bedroom to be close to Claire in case she woke up. He tucked her in and made sure she was warm and snuggled, and sat down by his old desk to wait. A little light reading in the old handbook from his former employer would keep him mildly entertained.

Four chapters into the handbook Five was startled out of his studying as the sound of loud, off key singing suddenly appeared down in the hall.

_Shit!_

He recognised the voices of Diego and Luther, and by the sound of them they were pretty squiffy. There was also the hushed voice of Klaus, but he was too far away for Five to read out the words.

He checked on Claire and made sure she was still sound asleep and hurried into the hall where, to his horror, he noticed that all three of his brothers were on their way up the stairs and heading straight for..

“Fivey!” Diego boomed as he was the first to reach the top of the stairs.

“How’s it hangin little bro?!” He then realised what he implied, and laughed so hard to his own bad joke that Five half expected him to swallow his tongue.

“Cute, Diego!” Klaus snarled and tried to shimmy his way between his brothers to end up between them and Five.

“As you see, Diego and Luther have gotten themselves a little tipsy..” he sighed with an awkward smile as he acted as Five’s personal little Mexican Wall. But he didn’t stand a chance against Luther who simply picked him up and put him down again to his side.

“Five, I need to talk to you.” Luther’s voice was slurred, and his eyes weren’t able to focus on Five at all. His movements were sluggish and he was even drooling a little

“You need to go sleep it off!” Five growled and flinched as Luther tried to grab his arm, and missed.

“No, I need to talk to you first.” Luther was swaying a little, but this time he managed to catch Five’s arm before he was able to dodge. Five tensed up as the grip on his arm was a little tighter than comfortable, and Klaus immediately picked up on his unease.

“Luther, let go of him, you’re hurting him!”

Luther moved his gaze over to Klaus who was once more acting as a wall between Five and his brothers.

“I’m just.. making sure he doesn’t.. blink off!” Luther grumbled, but let go of Five’s arm.

“I’m not going anywhere, “ Five snarled: “But you guys need to keep your voices down, _Claire_ is here!”

“Whaaa?” Confusion was now taking control of Luther’s body and he was swaying even more as he evidently was trying to shift his focus.

“Claire, _Allison’s_ Claire?!”

“Yes!” Five wheesed. “And do you morons want your niece to see you like this?”

“Hey, Five.. You look a little winded..” Klaus suddenly remarked, touching his shoulder.

“I’m not winded, I’m just f..” Five started. Then there was the most peculiar feeling as his entire stomach tensed up, making it hard to breathe. He tried to act non baffled but his sudden silence and “frozen statue” act was visible even to Luther.

“I’m… fine..!” he breathed.

“Oh my god, he’s going into labour!” Luther screamed, and before Five even registered what was happening Luther had picked him up and was carrying him down the stairs in an alarming pace.

“Where the hell are you taking him?!” Klaus squealed as he followed him down the stairs as fast as his feet could possibly carry him. Diego was left at the top of the staircase laughing his ass off.

“Hospital!” Luther snapped. “I’m not letting anything happen to Allison!”

“Shit, Luther.. Let go of me!” Five snarled as the peculiar cramp seized and he was able to speak again. He whacked the top of Luther’s head to state his point. Luther’s enormous body came to a halt and he stared dumbly at the much smaller man lodged into his arms.

“You’re not going into labor?” he asked, confused.

“No, you mormon! It was just braxton hicks contractions!” Five growled as Luther carefully put him down on the ground again.

“Braxton what?”

“Braxton hicks contractions, false labour,” Five growled as he brushed his coat with angry movements, fed up. How the hell was he going to keep these drunken bastards away from Claire? Just as the thought had entered his mind a familiar voice rang jubilantly from upstairs.

“Uncle Diego, uncle Klaus and uncle Luther, you are stinking drunk!”

“Actually, I’m sober,” Klaus corrected as he waved at his niece. “Diego and Luther on the other hand, they are stinking drunk.”

Claire didn’t seem to mind her uncles being intoxicated at all as she ran and gave them each a long and heartfelt hug.

“You’re so much funnier than the uncles on my dad’s side!” she cheered as she jumped into Luther’s arms. Luther was suddenly looking very awkward and was starting to send Five snide little side looks of alarm.

“Relax Luther, she knows,” Five groaned when he realised why his brother was panicking.

“She does.. you do?!” Luther gaped in surprise. Claire nodded, with a smile worthy of a brave little trooper as she was fighting off the tears starting to form in her eyes.

“Oh shit!” Diego gasped. “You guys realise Claire is going to be older than her mom when Five spits her out?!”

If his eyes ever were to detach from his skull and plop out of his head that would have been the precise moment. Five gave Diego the stare feared by every assassin and bad guy who had ever had a brush with him, grabbed Claire by the hand and spatial pulled her up to his bedroom where they toppled over each other on the floor. Five could feel the impact running from his tailbone and up his spine, settling in his neck with a promise of a severe migraine later on. Claire was lucky enough to land flat on her back, without knocking the wind out of her.

“Sorry about that,” Five groaned and hauled his ass up from the floor. He could already hear the sound of heavy footsteps in the stairs. He limped over to the door and locked it. He silently hoped a locked door would be signal enough for his brothers to back off.

“Diego… he can be a foulmouthed jerk when he’s drinking.” he sighed as he turned towards the twelve year old currently scrambling to her feet in front of him.

Claire was wiping away the tears in her eyes as she climbed back into Five’s bed. Hugging her knees she sniffled a little and gave him a cheeky scowl.

“I thought you were the mean drunk in the family,” she snivelled, and chuckled a little under her breath.

“Who told you that?!” Five asked her incredulously as he went over to the bed and sat down beside her.

Claire looked up at him, tears streaming down her cheeks as she answered with a sad smile on her face:

“Mom.”

“Oh well,” Five mused and put his arm around her shoulder: “She’s quite right. I’m generally the mean one, with or without alcohol..”

\-----------

God what a mess.. Vanya had been to every low key pub and waterhole in the city without finding her brothers. And when she finally went back home she found the mansion in an uproar. Diego was singing Queen songs and practising his knife throwing abilities in the library. Klaus was trying to comfort a drunk and upset Luther bawling his eyes out in the kitchen, and Five apparently had barricaded himself and Claire into his bedroom.

First she confiscated Diego’s knives with a promise he would get them back first thing tomorrow morning if he was a good boy and went to bed. Then she handed Klaus a jug full of coffee, with orders to make Luther drink it and to make sure he didn’t venture anywhere near Five or Claire while intoxicated. Then she ventured upstairs where she very softly knocked on Five’s door.

“Five, Claire? It’s me, Vanya,” she told them softly and waited. She could hear footsteps from the other side of the door, and soon the sound of a key turning. Claire opened the door and let her in.

“Shhh, be quiet,” she whispered: “uncle Five is sleeping. He was very tired and tried so hard not to sleep, so I told him I would keep watch and wake him if anything happened. I think he’s afraid of uncle Luther or something when he drinks.”

Vanya was amazed by the girl’s steadiness. By the looks of Five’s pale face he had been blinking again, probably pulling Claire with him in the jump.

“Uncle Luther is struggling a little to adjust to the fact that your mom..is going to have to start anew as a baby,” Vanya told her silently.

“Yeah, I know. I know they like each other,” Claire mumbled and rubbed her shoulder. “I guess it’s alright when they’re adopted, and not real brothers and sisters, right?” Vanya shrugged.

“I guess we never grew up as brothers and sisters as long as our father was in the picture. He wanted us to act as competitors more than siblings.”

Vanya watched how Claire’s eyes lingered by the sleeping shape of her uncle.

“How are you holding on, hun?” she asked her draping her arm around her shoulder and pulling the girl in for a hug. Claire held on tight for a while in silence, then she let go.

“Uncle Five has promised he will fix her so she will be my grownup mom again.” she whispered. Alarm bells went off in Vanya’s head.

“He has _promised?!”_ she repeated, more than a little miffed. If Five had assured his niece something he couldn’t deliver he would end up hurting her even more!

“Ok, he promised he would try,” Claire admitted: “But he has a plan.”

“I’m sure he does, Claire. But that will have to wait. Right now all he needs to concentrate on is to bring your mom safely back to the world, and then we will worry about the next step when we get there, alright?”

“Ok.”

Claire went in for another hug, and as Vanya held her close, wishing and hoping Five actually had a valid plan that would work, she feared the worst. If he was going to tamper with an already wonky timeline yet again anything could happen and Vanya wasn’t sure anyone was worth that possible sacrifice, even Allison.

The morning arrived and it was time for Claire to go to the airport where her dad would be waiting. The mansion scrambled slowly to life as two hungover idiots did the walk of shame down to the kitchen to drink all the coffee, and Klaus woke up Five who was still sleeping in a fetal position in his bed. Claire had spent most of the night together with Vanya in the library, and she finally got the mom to daughter- talk she had craved from her mother. Vanya thankfully turned out to be a decent substitute.

Five wasn’t accustomed with or had much experience regarding the human traditions of saying goodbye. He had ended more lives than he would ever dare to count, but there had never been a serenade as he pulled the trigger, never a few words as a sendoff. Get it over with quickly, and don’t look back!

There was a promise of snow in the December air as Vanya escorted Claire down the steps and down to the waiting taxi. The girl was crying silently, not wanting to leave, and Five had to keep his eyes drifting to act undisturbed himself. Inside him Allison acted like she was trying to claw herself outside with her bare fingers, and Claire pulled away from Vanya and ran up the steps where she tossed herself towards Five and into a fierce hug.

“I don’t want to leave you mom!” she snivelled into his vest. Five, almost losing his balance as the tiny girl pounced on him silently let her make her goodbyes with her mom. After a while, when Claire’s muffled words were becoming unreadable, Five jolted his head towards Klaus and beckoned him closer. He took Five’s silent command immediately and held out his hand. Claire watched with one eye as she held on tight around her uncle’s waist and still denied to let go. Klaus’ palm came into contact with Five and it started to glow. Klaus opened his eyes and smiled at Claire.

“Claire, Allison wants me to tell you that she is so, so proud of you. She wishes she could be there with you right now to give you a million hugs and kisses, and to tell you it will all be alright. She tells me to tell you that she loves you, and to go with Vanya. Daddy loves you and will forgive you. And we will be together soon, she promises.”

Claire hid her face into Five’s waist and sobbed.

“I love you to mom!”

After a while she finally let go, and went down the steps where Vanya was waiting. She looked up on Five and blew him a kiss.

“Keep mom safe, Uncle Five. I love you!” Then she got into the taxi, and was gone. Five and his brothers followed the taxi with their eyes until it disappeared around a corner and was out of sight. Luther silently patted Five’s shoulder as he went inside together with Diego and Klaus. Five lingered on the steps for a while, fighting to detain his emotions. He’d never felt so bad about a simple farewell in his entire life, and he’d snuffed out the life out of countless victims.

He wasn’t even aware that it had started to snow.


	14. So it begins

At first he didn’t even notice them, the tiniest little tremors gravitating through his body, lightly like whispers. It was late christmas eve and Five was hiding out in the library after Klaus and Vanya’s “Christmas Extravaganza”. The day and evening had been a weird marathon of what his siblings considered valuable christmas traditions they never had the pleasure of participating in back when they were children in the Hargreeves Mansion. They had tried to integrate every single christmas cliche from every christmas movie ever made into some sort of total package.

It all blasted off in the morning, with Klaus and Vanya, quite tipsy one might add, going from bedroom to bedroom caroling. Five was abruptly awoken to the not so in tune version of “Ding dong merrily on Five!”, followed by another instant classic: “Hark the herald Allisons sing”. And then he was hauled out of bed to join them decorating “the tree”. “The tree” seemed to be something the janitor had left for the garbagemen to pick up in the morning. It was a sorry mess of a pine dropping needles everywhere. Now it was positioned by the fireplace looking miserable. The next step in the “total christmas package” obviously, was to embellish said tree. Luther, Diego and Five made a moody trio to say the least, but they all pitched in in hope to regain the tree some dignity. Half an hour later the tree looked like the Christmas Elf had puked glitter all over it.

After this big stockings in red, white and green were hung by the fireplace with Klaus and Vanya dancing pretty excitedly around, and so there was time for Christmas breakfast slash lunch. The meal was a feist of plenty from the local Taco Food Truck, as neither Vanya nor Klaus knew how to cook anything but instant noodles. Eating tacos for breakfast deemed a big no no for Five, who was already plagued with heartburn and night sweats. After half a burrito he politely excused himself and went to the bathroom where the burrito was returned. He gave himself a tired glare in the mirror before he trudged back to the kitchen.

Almost retching again by the smell of the mexican food Five leaned heavily into the refrigerator on a quest to find anything that didn’t stamp as appalling to his current tastebuds. He felt weird though, as something inside him had shifted during the night, and Allison seemed calmer today, somehow. He returned to the table with a single glass of milk, making eyebrows rise around the table. Five even dodged coffee, given the fact that last night’s cappuccino had given him the runs during most of the night. He loved coffee, but not that much.

“Not hungry today?” Luther asked as he was devouring his tenth burrito or so.

“Nah, guess not,” Five answered, putting on a twisted grin, trying to look appropriately christmas cheery. Truth be told he felt constipated, bloated and tired. Not at all in a christmas state of mind.

Klaus immediately picked up on the mood and scooted his chair closer to Five’s. Five instantly knew what he was up to.

“No, you are NOT emoting with Allison to ask her if I’m constipated again!” he snapped and jerked himself and chair further away from his brother. Klaus gave him a mournful glare, underlined with true innocence.

“Why, I don’t know what you mean?”

Five simply huffed and rolled his eyes.

Thankfully they were given the rest of the day off until late dinner, while Vanya and Klaus were actually trying to cook up a christmas dinner feast from scratch. The menu looked promising enough, with roast turkey, turkey stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. None of their siblings had the heart to tell them that the menu they were preparing might not be as christmassy as they believed..

Several excruciatingly smelly hours and small fires in the kitchen later they gave up and went back to the Taco Truck to pick up dinner. By this time Five was certain he was not up for any more mexican food as his stomach was already curling up in disgust any time he smelled anything remotely spicy. He therefore excused himself to the library while his siblings were eating, much to the others’ disdain.

But they let him go without too much fuss, seeing as they silently had noticed how Five was getting winded just by walking through a room lately. As he was trying to find a somehow comfortable position in the armchair he became aware of the small miniscule twinges down his lower back, creeping through his spine like ants on tippy toes. He shook it off to indigestion and tried to focus on the book currently resting on top of his forever growing gut. The “light reading” was a book on Triple integrals, courtesy Princeton institute for advanced study. But his brain was itchy, his focus shifting and sliding in and out. It was like his entire body was trying to tell him something he wasn’t yet aware of.

After a while he gave up on the reading and went back to the kitchen where his sister and brothers now were singing, “Last christmas”, loudly. Glasses were jingling and the smell of wine and booze was draping the room like a heavy fog.

“Hey Fivey, come join us!” Diego cheered as they noticed him. Five noticed Klaus looking unusually sober, a glass of wine resting between slender fingers. It was still filled to the brim, and he had a look of caution on him as Five entered the room. Five granted them all a crooked smile and decided to join them unbeknownst of his better knowing.

He had just poured himself a cup of coffee, decaf, when it struck. It was like some sort of cramp at first, starting in his lower back. From there it slowly started moving through his body, rising, rising rising in intensity until he was just standing there, crouched sillily by the kitchen counter, feeling like a big ball of nerves.The cup of coffee had been dropped in both surprise and confusion, and the coffee splattered up his left leg like mud on a rainy day.

“Ouch!” he growled, much to his surprise and his breathing tensed up. He panicked for a moment when he realised what this was. Contractions. He straightened his back awkwardly trying to act non baffled but to his great annoyance Klaus had already picked up on his discomfort.

“You alright, Five?” He was already by the counter, cating those big soulful eyes on him, demanding answers.

“Yeah, just dropped my.. coffee.” Five breathed as the contraction slowly eased up.

“You were in pain before you dropped that coffee,” Klaus whispered: ”If you don’t want all of your drunken siblings on your ass right now I suggest you let me follow you out of here.”

_Shit!_

Klaus made them some over the top excuse for leaving the “best christmas party EVER” which their siblings all ate up, drunk as they were, and he led Five out of the kitchen by the arm. Five was not knowing what to think or believe as he was slowly realising the time he had been waiting for with bated breath the last nine months finally had come. This was it, this was crunch time!

“Where do you want us to go?” Klaus asked him as he gently led Five up a flight of stairs. “Bathroom or bedroom?” Five silently wondered how he was going to get rid of his brother, but answered him politely.

“Bedroom,” Five decided.

He figured with a little luck he would be finished with the birth by midnight, and if he managed to lure Klaus out to fetch something he could lock the door and be left in peace for the time being. But halfway up the stairs a new set of contractions set in and Five was slowly starting to get an inkling that childbirth wouldn’t be the uncomfortable but tolerable experience he’d pictured beforehand. Contorting into a cumbersome pose he grabbed on to Klaus’ shoulder while trying to breathe through a rising wave of pain and nausea.

“Change.. of.. plan. Bathroom!” he stuttered, feeling bile already rising in his throat.

Klaus was blissfully silent as he grabbed his brother under the shoulder and led him the way into the bathroom. Five almost made it to the toilet before he threw up all over himself.

“Shit!” Five squealed miserably when the contraction and retching ended and he sagged down on the floor, resting his head and back meekly against the wall.

_I didn’t think contractions would feel like this?!_

“You look like shit, my dear,” Klaus murmured and started to clean him off as best he could. One might easily mistake that sweaty, limp mess on the floor to be stinking drunk by the first look.

“You’ll feel better when the nausea goes away,” Klaus told him calmly and started to undress Five of his soiled clothes. “And everything feels better after a warm bath.” He went over to the bathtub and opened the faucets.

Five watched in silence as Klaus drew him a bath. He was flabbergasted by the intensity and strength of the first two contractions, feeling somewhat silly for making a spectacle of himself.

But were they supposed to feel this intense already? Vanya had tethered on and on about the lenght and pain of childbirth, and how he had to prepare himself for hours on end of torture. Five who’d endured real torture more times than he bothered to count wasn’t afraid. He knew how to handle pain. But this was something different than pain, it was something more. There was fear behind this pain as well, but it also housed anticipation. Something beyond anything he’d ever experienced was about to happen and, as much as he dreaded it he also longed for this to start so that he would reach the finish line.

Before long he was sitting in the bathtub grinding his teeth to avoid groaning in his brother’s presence. Klaus kindly let him heave in peace and went to fetch him a clean set of clothes while Five was panting through the swell of more pain.

“Don’t tell the others..it has.. started,” he managed to wheeze before Klaus left the room, and his brother simply looked at him with kind eyes, and nodded.

The warm water helped, some. The warm liquid enclosed him and swallowed some of the highest peaks of the pain as new contractions hit. Klaus timed his return well, and Five was almost able to look relaxed when his brother entered the room again.

“I want you to reach out to Allison, to make sure she’s alright,” Five told him, after a moment of awkward silence. "I just need to know she’s alright.”

“Contractions and childbirth is different from person to person, you never know how it will be until you try it,” Klaus answered him matter of factly. As if he had ever endured pregnancy or childbirth..!

“And as far as I can see you and Allison are doing just fine.”

Five grabbed the edge of the bathtub with both hands, almost buckling the steel in the process. Jaw clenched he set his fiercest glare on his brother.

“I. Need. To. Know. She’s.. Alright!”

“Alright alright, jeez!” Klaus snapped back and hurried over, just as Five reluctantly experienced another contraction. He doubled over in pain and was conjuring deep inarticulate sounds of labored breaths that had Klaus thinking of some of his weirder moments as a kult leader back in the 60s.

“Is it alright if I touch you..?” Klaus asked him, unsure of what Five’s current personal boundaries were, as he was sitting buck naked in a bathtub in front of him, growling.

Five’s answer was a deadly frown and a nice attempt at ripping Klaus’ shoulder clean off its socket as he grabbed his arm and jerked it over to plant Klaus’ palm against his side.

“Now!” he growled, squeezing his eyes shut and grappling the edge of the bathtub again.

Klaus sat down on his knees, closing his eyes as he reached out for Allison through his mind. He could feel the swell of pain radiating through Five as contact between them was established and he was amazed Five wasn’t howling for the moon. He felt bad for minimizing his brother's distress. Through Allison he felt a mix of anticipation and fear. She had started on her descent down the birth canal, but it was a narrow path. He felt her stubborn concentration and knew she was doing her best to return to them on the outside. He wished her luck, blocking out the gnawing sensation Five’s narrow hips might be an issue later in the process.

“How is she?” Five panted when Klaus opened his eyes again.

“Allison says hi, and that she’s busy doing her part,” Klaus told him softly watching goosebumps running up and down Five’s body..

“I believe you will help her along if you’re able to get up and about after the bath. Movement will help her move in the right direction.”

“Get me out of here then,” Five growled.

He hit the hallways, pacing them like a zombie without a mission. Once in a while he stopped, leaning heavily towards a wall or Klaus, whatever he managed to grab a hold of first as he breathed his way through a new set of contractions. Down in the dining room the sound of his siblings’ drunken feast was rising and sinking, no doubt they were having the christmas of their lives.

Four hours after the first contraction Five was realising he wouldn’t be done by midnight. He might very well be doing this until next midnight..

“How far.. are they apart?” he asked Klaus as he kept a slow pace through the bedroom halls.

“Five to six minutes, approximately,” Klaus answered: “How are you holding on?”

“I think I need to rest a little,”Five confessed, staggering a little. He was surprised at how exhausting these contractions actually were.

“Probably a good idea,” Klaus agreed. “I’ll see if I can find you something to sleep on, get you rested a bit before the.. grand finale.” Five shuddered at the thought.

Being an old junkie had its perks. Klaus was quite versed in the world of pain medication, and he’d even dappled with a few of the meds used to ease labor pains during a short fling with a male nurse back in the days. He rummaged through Reginald’s old medicine cabinets and found both Pethidine and a container of Nitrous Oxide. He decided the pethidine would be the route to go for Five right now. It might help him take the edge off the worst pain, enabling him the possibility to relax enough for him to get some much needed rest and sleep.

Five didn’t even flinch when Klaus entered the bedroom with a syringe in his hand.

“Is it safe for Allison?” he simply asked, and when Klaus nodded he let him administer it without hesitation. Soon his face relaxed, as the medicine started to take effect, and he curled over to his side, as pain numbed down to discomfort, and discomfort eased over into sweet blissful sleep.


	15. The Dark Horse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Swede is for one special lady out there, you know who you are. 😘

_ Something’s wrong. Wake up! _

Five awoke with a start, not knowing how long he’d been out. The room around him was dark, and by his bedside the outline of Klaus’ snoring body was barely showing in the darkness. Five's hairs were curling with alarm without him being aware what he was reacting to. He could feel Allison’s presence, making soft movements inside him, and the pethidine seemed to have the desired effect still. But this was something different..  _ This _ had nothing to do with the upcoming birth. Five’s heart started racing when he realised what was wrong. There was someone in this room, someone that wasn’t supposed to be here. He could sense the stranger’s movements. He was skilled, probably an agent from the Commission by the stealth he showed. There to his left, far corner of the room, creeping slowly closer for the kill. Five handled on gut instinct. He grabbed Klaus by the arm and blinked them out of the room before the opponent managed to react. They dropped to the floor in the main kitchen, Klaus awaking with a yelp, but getting knocked out as they thudded to the ground, Klaus head first. 

Five, hauling himself to his feet with a grunt, was already calculating the next move as he checked Klaus’ pulse and determined him just passed out. Where were the rest of his siblings? Were they taken out, were they all still in the dining room, blind drunk and unable to defend themselves? Why was he hunted, and why had they come for him now? Did they know he would be at his most vulnerable at this time? As an answer to that heavy boots was echoing through the halls.

“What do you want from me?!” Five yelled, arming himself with a kitchen knife as he prepared for another jump. 

There was no answer, only silence. Five’s jaw clenched. He recognised that silence.. Hoping for adrenaline to help him Five did another jump, away from Klaus and into the hallway where he knew  _ he _ was waiting. The last swede. 

He looked the same, ridiculously blonde hair, piercing eyes, looming silence and a shotgun. Not even a smirk as Five appeared with knife at the ready.

The Swede pointed at Five’s belly.

“Skottpengar,” he almost hummed in that weird melodic language that was his native tongue.

Skottpengar... bounty. Five felt an ice cold chill run down his spine. This was bad. This was really, really bad. 

“Who set the bounty?” Five demanded, crouching a little to make his point of gravity lower to the ground and make his middle a less obvious target. He was thankful there wasn’t anything left in his stomach to empty.

The swede jerked his shoulders nonchalantly, not answering. There was a cold calculating look in his eyes, and Five knew there wasn’t a chance in hell he would outmanage this man in his current state.

“My brothers and sister?” 

The swede mimicked heavy drinking and someone passing out. 

“Bara du,” he murmured and pointed his shotgun at him. This time he smirked. 

_ Shit!  _

The gnawing sensation down in his lower back was starting to trickle back and Five knew the effect of the pethidine was slowly starting to expire. In a matter of minutes he would be feeling the full effect of the contractions again. He was no match for this man, he had to make a move now! He set into motion at the same time the Swede made a sharp movement towards him, spatial jumping blindly and ending up at the bottom of the stairs where he tumbled over on his hands and knees with an anguished moan. He turned to see the Swede appear at the top of the stairs, the only thing revealing his haste was that flopping mop of blonde hair on the top of his head as he charged down the stairs, two steps at the time. Five pulled out all he got and jumped again, this time slamming down on his back in the library, getting the wind knocked out of him momentarily. Rolling over to his side he slowly got up on his feet, already knowing the Swede was running down the hallway towards him. Five started to head towards the dining room, blind hope that at least one of his siblings would be there and able to defend him. Limping his way towards the end of the room, he opened the door to the dining room at the same moment the Swede came charging inside the room at the other end. 

The man stopped, smirk now growing wider as he slowly started to cross the room. He was moving in for the last part of the hunt, no urgency in his posture, silently enjoying every move he made. Five knew the Swede was tiring him out, playing some sick game of cat and mouse, but there wasn’t a fiber in his body that was able to accept defeat. Five closed the door behind him and locked it, one last look on that awfully confident mug heading towards him. At least the Swede wanted him alive, or else he would be long dead by now. 

The dining room was empty except for the mess left by his siblings. They were probably all gone to bed by now, snoring happily away in their beds, not sensing the hunt going on downstairs. Five watched the handle of the door he’d just locked being shot to smithereens by the Swede’s shotgun and he dug his nails into his palms and forced another jump out of his battered nerves with a shriek. 

This time he had aimed to enter the space behind the Swede hoping to run the knife into his spine, but ended up toppled over in the hallway upstairs, every bone in his body screaming as he tried to get up, and couldn’t. His vision grew blurry and he struggled to breathe as he was making a feebleminded attempt at getting up. He squinted sluggishly at the dark blurred out shape moving towards him, and recognised the shaft of the shotgun just as it made an impact with his jaw. Five saw stars, and passed out. 

  
  


The next time he awoke he was no longer sprawled out on the hallway floor, nor was he even in the mansion. He recognized the texture of a bed, a bed that was stranger to him, and it seemed to be located inside a small, drafty cabin somewhere. Five didn’t need to open his eyes to know he wasn’t alone. He could feel the Swede’s presence in the room. His arms were handcuffed to the headboard and by the dull ache and soreness in muscles and shoulders he figured he’d been out for quite some time. To his right in the far corner he could smell and feel the warmth of birchwood burning in a small fireplace.

The pain in his abdomen seemed to have alleviated into a mellow ache, and Five was sluggishly wondering if the Swede had drugged him to ease the move to this place. 

_ Allison _ ! 

How was she reacting to the drugs?! He slowly started jerking at the handcuffs against better knowledge, hoping against hope the Swede had cuffed him sloppily.

“Relax. Baby doing fine.” 

Five snapped his eyes open, trying to focus on the man behind the voice, daftly realising this was the one time he’d heard him communicate in somewhat english. Slowly the swede drifted into sight and he bent over the bed to adjust something strapped to Five’s stomach. What the hell.. was he monitoring.. Allison? 

“Heartbeat good.” The swede gestured towards a small machine that was continuously printing something on paper. Five tried to focus on the sound of Allison’s heartbeat and movements, but his head was still drowsy. Slowly he drifted off into a state of dreamless sleep again.

The third time he woke there was no doubt in his mind that the drugs were now flushed out of his system. It was like the contractions had returned with a vengeance, throwing themselves at him at full force.

Shit, fuck, hell and back! Five wasn’t even aware that he was growling in pain as he regained consciousness. He felt the Swede draw closer and drew a silent breath of release as his captor removed the handcuffs. The swede was no imbecile. He knew Five wasn’t going anywhere in this state, and Five wasn’t even considering trying. Holy fucking christ, this was a new game of pain!

He was rolled over to his side and something warm was placed at his back, a hot water bottle?

“Keep on side. Baby heartbeat dropping,” the swede growled when Five tried to roll back. Five silently abided, acutely aware that the burning sensation in the pit of his stomach was steadily growing in volume by each breath. He was starting to panic, a feeling he was all too familiar with as of late. He wanted out of this bed and out of this cottage, he wanted back home into his own bed, with his annoying siblings around him like some demented caretakers, being all over him with fussy blankets and soft spoken words. He found himself desperately wanting someone to grab his hand and tell him it was going to be ok.

“Please, she’s just a baby,” Five groaned as the contraction finally eased off and he was able to wheeze a few words up his throat again. He cared diddly squat about what would happen to him, but Allison was an entirely different matter..

“I cut out baby if you flatline,” the Swede murmured, patting his shoulder. Five wasn’t all too impressed with the Swede’s bedside manners.

“I liked you better when you were silent,” he wheezed. He actually received half a smirk for that comment. 

_ Oh fuck, already?!  _

Five grabbed the pillow and held on for dear life as a fresh set of contractions slowly started to grind through his abdomen and back, building, building until he couldn’t hold back a moan any longer. The nausea returned with full force and he was retching helplessly, biting his cheek to keep from groaning too loud. The Swede would not have that satisfaction.

The contractions were coming in faster and harder like a hailstorm, and Five had a hard time breathing through them without hyperventilating or wailing. Trying hard to occupy his mind with something to focus on Five tried to recite the books he had borrowed from the library on the matter. The breaks between the contractions were getting smaller and smaller, and the contractions were getting more and more pesky. Was this the second phase, the phase of birthing that was deemed the most.. cumbersome by most women? He forced himself up on his feet, knowing full well the Swede was watching his every move. His entire body tensed up as he took a few stumbling steps out on the floor. He pulled off the wires connecting him to the fetal monitor and told the Swede with one fierce glare that he wasn’t getting anywhere near him when he started towards him.

“They stay off until I say so!” he snarled, making his oppressor stop midstep. Five didn’t know why he was up on his feet walking, but something inside him forced him. He didn’t want to move around, he  _ needed _ to move around. Five was daftly wondering if Allison was rumoring him from the inside. There, a new set of contractions was soaring through him like a tidal wave and he grabbed on to a small table. He gave no fucks whatsoever anymore about his pride, and growled with the pain, working with it for the first time. Arching his back and moving with the contractions helped him regain some inkling of control and there was a delightful feeling of relief as something “popped?” on the inside and fluids suddenly was gushing out of him. 

What the hell… Did he just pee himself?!

“Hon är här snart,” the Swede hummed and suddenly got busy over by the little stove. Was he boiling water?! Five gave him an incredulous glare. Was he thinking about tea now?! Here he was soaked in his own...

Five suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to.. 

_ Shit! _

“I need.. to go.. to the ..toilet.. NOW!” he snarled, his entire body tensing up as the fiercest set of contractions known to Five exploded over him, forcing him to take an unnatural stance, resting his weight towards the table, nails digging into the wood. Knees buckling he threw his head back, clenching his jaw as a burning sensation was starting to grow in his groin. 

He was literally going to shit himself! Drenched in sweat, bodily fluids and, although he would die before admitting it, tears, he held on for dear life as he decided he had no more fucks to give and let it rip, so to speak. He thrust his weight into it and pushed.


	16. Thunder and lightning

One would perhaps believe that the Swede had a rich emotional life and big inner conversations with himself, as he was a man of few words. Truth be told, he was almost as silent on the inside as he was on the outside. As an assassin he was among the deadliest, and although he hadn’t quite reached legendary status among the temps assassins as Five had, he was doing the dirty work no one else would touch with a ten feet pole. He was a blank slate emotion wise, no loyalty to any employer, highest bidder the winner. The only loyalty he’d felt his entire life was to his family, and after his brothers’ death he was an unknown quantity, riding the opportunities as they arose, bound by no one.

When the bounty for baby Allison was put on the dark net by the Dark Horse Organisation he decided to throw himself into the game. The bounty would add a pretty penny to his retirement fund, and although he had let her go once, he never forgot how she rumoured him to kill his own brother. The only smidge of respect was the one he held for Five, who had risked his entire family to show The Swede he wanted no more killings. 

Five wasn’t part of the bounty. He was too much of an enigma, much like him. Five was fiercely loyal to his family and would stop at nothing to save them, much like The Swede had been regarding his brothers. The Swede secretly hoped Five would escape this somewhat unscathed. The man in the boy’s body was a curious tale, his story an interesting one to follow. And if he would have to kill him someday he wanted it to be in an epic showdown man on man, not watching him die, whimpering in something as ridiculous as childbirth. 

The experienced assassin was starting to look pretty drained as the ordeal went down...

But something changed in the Five's frail posture as he got to his feet, and the Swede watched with interest as Five suddenly bore his chin down to his chest and started to growl. There was something animalistic in that scene that fascinated him, and he realised the time had come for the final stretch. 

The Swede fetched a kitchen knife and went over to where the container of his bounty was standing, leaning heavily towards a small wooden table with rickety feet. He was mildly surprised when his earlier enemy didn’t even flinch when the blade flicked near his thigh and his shorts were torn from his body in one swift move. Instead he spread his thighs further apart and bent his knees some more, apparently working with gravity to ease the passing of the baby. But he was struggling. The Swede suspected Five’s pelvis was too narrow, and that the baby was stuck. Blood was trickling down his thighs and the teenage bodied man’s labored breathing was starting to get shallow. 

“Ge inte upp, tryck mer!” The Swede hummed, after having a quick peek between Five’s legs. The baby was stuck, he was sure of it. More blood was trickling down Five's thighs every time he bore down and all color was draining from his scrunched up face. The Swede felt irritation well up inside him, watching the man before him starting to give way to the pain and the pressure. This wasn’t the way to end this legend of an assassin, and he would take the bounty with him to his death if the Swede didn’t act swiftly. 

At first he thought about just cutting the baby out of him, simple but messy. But if the baby was indeed stuck too far down in Five’s pelvis she would die any way if he went for that approach. 

“She’s stuck, I … I .. can’t get her.. out!” Five gasped, dawning realisation in his eyes. The Swede saw desperation starting to mix into the pain in the young face. He suspected there was more than sweat pouring down Five's cheeks, and he felt a light sting in the bond they shared about family loyalty. The Swede growled as he made up his mind, he gave the slowly yielding man before him a stern look and ordered him:

“Inte dö!” 

Swift like a shadow he fetched the briefcase he had kept as a souvenir after his days as an agent for the Commission and with a flash of light he was gone.

\---

Five watched incredulously as the Swede vanished. Now what, was he to die here alone?! Five felt quite startled by the revelation that he would rather die in the company of the Swede than in the company of none. The pressure in his nether regions had now grown to the point of unbearable, and Five was retorting to anguished groaning and muttering, as he was pushing, straining, begging for Allison to get unstuck. 

He was about to burst, he was sure of it. He was blind to the world and everything in it. He was struggling towards the burning sensation in his crotch, roaring with pain as he kept pushing against what felt like the mother of all constipations.

After a while his legs were shaking so hard from exhaustion, that he dropped to his knees, unable to stand any longer. Keeling over to his side he felt the pull of gravity subside some, but the never ending pressure endured. So he was to die here then, alone like a capsized turtle, without anyone there to save Allison. When the white light and sound of an approaching briefcase filled the room for the second time, Five had closed his eyes.

\----

The Swede had set the coordinates for 25. of desember 2023 and he entered the library with his shotgun at the ready. He was in luck. All four of the Hargreeves’ siblings were huddled up in the library, probably in some meeting trying to figure out what the hell had happened to Five. They all looked quite flabbergasted when he suddenly emerged into the room from thin air, and the Swede mildly appreciated it. He pointed at two of them with the shotgun and gestured for them to come closer.

“You, muscle, you support!” he told the mountain they called Luther, and the small dark haired one they called Vanya. They were starting to protest like they always did, but he simply put five fingers into the air and made a “kill” gesture. They went with him without further protest.

\------

“Five, Five!” 

Somewhere someone was yelling his name, and it was quite annoying. 

“He’s unconscious, do you have anything we can administer, like adrenaline?!” Was that.. Vanya? Why was she pestering him, he was finally having some peace and quiet after that small ordeal with giving birth to his own sister and all that. 

There was some mumbling, and the feeling of getting his body hoisted up into the air and put down again on a softer surface. 

“There’s so much blood.. Luther, hold his legs so I can see. I can see the head, but we need to get her out NOW!” 

Vanya with the yelling again, and someone.. sobbing? Had to be Luther. Five just wanted to drift off back into that nice soft point of nothingness, where pain was a closed chapter and his disappointment and utter failure as a caretaker of his family was but a pale memory. There was some mumbling as well, on a foreign tongue that Five felt familiar with, but couldn’t quite get a grasp around, and then the feeling of a small needle prick to his arm. 

Nope, I’m not swallowing the red pill..!

Then there was like a hot wave rushed through his mind, forcing every battered nerve ending to start firing again on all cylinders. Five awoke with a roar, hauled back into the chaos of blood sweat and pain, and with Luther pushing down on the top of his waist with all he got. Five politely screamed his head off, almost convinced he was being ripped in half. He had believed he was numb and unable to feel more pain from the waist down. He was wrong, oh boy was he wrong! 

“Again, Luther, push down from the top while I pull at her head. We need to get her shoulder free from Five’s pelvis!” Vanya sounded like a drill sergeant, and Luther obeyed her every order while Five was a helpless bystander in the mess. Somewhere in the background the Swede seemed to be lurking with a shotgun. 

Vanya and Luther worked in perfect harmony, with panicked determination while Five watched it all unfold through a blurry vision. His crotch was burning like fire, he was pretty sure the bed was now marinated with both blood and other fluids, and all he wanted, all he needed was a hand to hold on to, but there were none. He wasn’t even aware of the sobs that were starting to grizzle out of his throat while his fingers were blindly searching for something, anything to hold on to.

Suddenly a warm hand interlocked with his, and Five was tossing a bewildered eye to his side where he realised the Swede was holding his hand, while casually pointing a shotgun at his siblings with his other.

“Kämpa,” he murmured in that strange melodic way that almost had him sounding like a poet. 

There was a rising pull to the vacuum inside him as Vanya put all her weight and curse words behind hauling at the source of obstruction in Five, and as Luther pushed down with both hands on top of his stomach one last time Five could finally feel Allison shift free from where she was stuck.

The urge to push awoke with a roar, and Five buckled as he grabbed Luther by the arm and bore his chin down to his chest and pushed with everything he got one last time. Grinding his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut and growling in torment Five held on and on and on until there finally was a sudden, overwhelming feeling of release. The ever building pressure finally disappeared together with the pain. He was gasping for air like a diver returning to the surface after too little oxygen, panting and panicking as he waited for a sign that Allison was alright. The Swede had let go of his hand and was working on something, someone(!) down by his feet, and Five could see frantic movements from the corner of his eye. Were they doing cpr on her? The sound of Luther softly sobbing somewhere to his left while daftly patting Five on the shoulder left a trail of goosebumps down his spine.

Let her be alright, please, please, please let Allison be alright!

Five held his breath, realising the pain he’d just endured was nothing compared to this. He had lost her, he had lost Allison.


	17. The Eye of the Storm

Five’s eyes glazed over while all focus was on the tiny lifeless body between his legs. Allison was blue, not moving, not breathing. Vanya was violently shoved aside as the Swede demanded control over the situation and started doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the little body. He was working swiftly, fiercely and concentrated, breathing air into her lungs, massaging her tiny chest and turning her over to drain fluids from her lungs. Five was unconscious when a high pitched wail pierced the silence and the Swede actually smiled in relief.

“Lilla elskling,” he hummed as the fire that was Allison showed itself in all its magnificent glory. For such a tiny package she sure was packing a massive voice and temper! Vanya watched in disbelief as the man cut the umbilical cord and swaddled the little one with ease and experience. 

“Vanya… Five’s not looking so good..” Luther’s voice snapped her out of the trance. He was right. Five was pale as a sheet, and his eyes were closed. 

Vanya grabbed his hand and almost recoiled at the touch. His skin felt cold and clammy, and he didn’t respond to being touched at all.

“Five?” Vanya pinched his cheek. No response.

“Five!” She slapped him this time, hard. Still no response. She desperately reached inside, trying to pull at her power, to bring him back from death’s door one more time, but the power recoiled inside her. There was a limit to her powers, she could only bring someone back one more time. And Five already had his...

She turned her head towards the Swede who seemed preoccupied by his prize, trying to soothe the wailing baby that was flailing in his arms. She went over, grabbed him by the arm and pleaded.

“Help him. Please...” The Swede looked like a spell was broken, as he looked down on tiny Vanya in front of him, and then moved his gaze over to the bed where Five was making his best impression of a corpse. A frown appeared between his eyes and Vanya figured she was observing the closest thing to the expression of worry that the Swede would ever emote. Was he.. growling?

Vanya suddenly found herself with baby Allison shoved into her arms as the Swede ran to fetch something square placed by a small wooden stove. A briefcase. He gestured for Luther to pick Five up, gestured for Vanya to stay, and with a flash of light The Swede, and Five's lifeless body, nestled into Luther’s arms, were gone. Vanya was blinking dumbly at the now empty bloodsoaked bed for a moment, then Allison’s angry wail pulled her back into the moment. 

She marveled at the sight of her, a tiny, scrunched up face with dark and alert eyes was studying her. It really was Allison, and Vanya just knew she was still inside this tiny body, although she had no chance to express it.

“What a journey you’ve been on, hon.” she cooed, realising she was crying herself. 

Ten minutes later the unmistakable sound of the Swede returning was filling the small cabin and Vanya tensed for a moment, counting her chances. She realised she had none, and simply waited for him to resurface.

He returned alone, as she suspected.

“Where’s Five, and Luther?” she asked him, heart on her sleeve as she realised he had a gunshot wound in his stomach. 

“Commission headquarter. Not happy to see me,” he answered, putting the briefcase down. He looked at Allison, now asleep in Vanya’s arms. There was a long pause of silence, Vanya weighing her options. She could try to grab the briefcase. The wound in the swede’s stomach looked severe enough for her to gain the upper hand, even with a newborn baby in her arms. 

“Lie down, I need to look at your wound,” she told him softly. He looked puzzled but silently obeyed. Vanya put Allison down in a small armchair, where she made tiny squeaky noises, snuggled and slept on.

The Swede was unlucky. The promise of a long and painful death lay within him where the bullet had pierced several vital organs. He had risked his life for Five, and lost. But why? She observed him in bepusslement as she worked on him in silence, feeling his eyes on her as she cleaned the wound, knowing the bleeding would continue until he died from blood loss or from shock as vital organs started shutting down.

All she had to do was to wait for him to lose consciousness, grab Allison and the briefcase, and surf the timeline back home. The Swede said nothing, but she knew he understood her thoughts. His breathing was already sounding a little labored and the bandages she’d applied were already soaked with blood.

A picture of Five appeared in her mind.   
“I love you, tiny Allison.” The words that had echoed in her heart for weeks and weeks, as proof of all Five had become. The man inside the child was starting to show through, and he now was so much more than the spoilt brat his body showed the shadows of. 

She suddenly knew what she had to do, even if that meant risking them all. She closed her eyes, resonating to the sound of Allison the baby’s squeaky snores, and felt the force rise inside her like a tide. A flash of white, healing light washed over the room and the Swede’s eyes went wide with something more than surprise as Vanya healed him. She suddenly had a glimpse of a little boy that ran around in a swedish garden at midsummer's eve together with two blonde haired little boys. Happiness was painting his features and he was laughing. 

The link to his mind was cut off in the same second he became aware of her presence. He had a puzzled look in his eyes as he seemed to question her reasons for healing him.

“You saved Allison, and you tried to help Five,” she simply answered him and went over to the armchair where Allison was still sleeping. She picked her up into her arms, taking her all in, through vision, smell and touch, acutely aware that this might be the last time she would hold her in her arms.

From the corner of her eye she watched as the Swede sat up in bed, touching the spot where his gunshot wound now was but a faint memory. She silently wondered what was going through his mind and if she should go for it and have a try at reaching the briefcase. But he would simply put a bullet in her brain long before she had a chance to do anything with Allison in her arms. As if reading her mind he reached out for the briefcase and set it in his lap, not losing track of her with his eyes. Vanya held the baby closer to her chest, defiance in her eyes.

“You’re not having her, she needs her family!” 

He said nothing, only watching her with that blank face. Then his eyes snapped down on the handle of the briefcase in his hands and he slowly started locking in coordinates. As he finished, he turned his eyes towards her again and he handed her the briefcase. 

“Älska henne,” he murmured.

Vanya stared at him, eyes growing wide as she felt the briefcase turn into gear and the all too familiar feeling of getting jerked out of her skin, pulled backwards through the fabric of time and space and into oblivion.

When she opened her eyes she was standing, quite shakily, on her own two legs in the main kitchen back in the Hargreeves mansion. Allison, blissfully was still fast asleep in her arms. The kitchen was empty, but she could hear a loud discussion going on from the library. Diego and Klaus was probably out of their minds with worry, being left behind when the Swede had fetched her and Luther barely two hours ago. It felt like a lifetime..

“Guys! Pipe down, you’ll wake the baby!” Vanya told them, realising she had to look a mess as she entered the library. Her clothes were soaked with blood from both Five and the Swede, and she was pretty sure she was crying again.

Klaus and Diego looked like she had literally fallen down from the moon. Then they locked eyes on what she was holding in her arms.

“Oh my god, it’s little Allison!” Klaus whined and immediately went into full blown uncle Klaus modus. As did Diego, with a high pitched:

“Baby Allisoooon!” as they both hurried over. Then they noticed the state of Vanya.

“Where’s Luther, and Five?” Diego asked her cautiously. 

“I.. I.. don’t know..” Vanya stuttered and started to sob. “I.. I.. think the Swede.. brought them to the Commission headquarters, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Why would he bring them there?” Diego asked her with a frown on his forehead.

“Five, lost a lot of blood, he was dying. I think the Swede brought him there to save him,” Vanya muttered, not even believing herself when she said it out loud.

“And you and Allison escaped in the meanwhile?” Klaus chimed in.

“He let us go,” Vanya answered him, suddenly feeling like a ton of bricks. “I think I need to sit down for a little while.. could someone take Al..” Two pairs of hands shot out immediately, Klaus grabbed the baby, and Diego grabbed Vanya before she dropped to the ground.


	18. Is there a back door?

Two hours after the arrival of Vanya and baby Allison the sound of a briefcase filled the room anew. This time Diego and Klaus were armed to their teeth, ready to face whatever jackass broot that was going after their baby sister. It was, however, Luther and a scrawny little woman in a grey office suit, probably a secretary. She vanished into thin air again almost immediately, but unfortunately without bringing with her the proof of Luther’s evident nerves.

“Oh my God, Luther, you need to have that checked out!” Diego moaned as the smell of Luther’s flatulence draped the library.

“I can’t help it, I’m nervous!” Luther whined, already looking around the room in a distressed manner.

“Where’s Vanya … and Allison? I was told they are here..” 

Klaus gestured his chin upwards.

“Vanya’s bedroom. They both were tired so we let them sleep.” Luther was already halfway across the room, heading for the hallway. Diego ran after him and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Wait, what about Five?” he asked him. Luther stopped, gave a tired little smile and huffed.

“He’s getting a blood transfusion and being stitched up as we speak. That little time gremlin is tough as nails.”

“That gorgeous little shitheel!” Diego groaned, feeling like a ton of bricks had been lifted from his shoulders. He watched Luther as he headed out the door, and then went back to guard patrol together with Klaus. Briefcases were dropping down by the hour at this rate, better keep a wary eye..

\------

Tough as nails… Five certainly didn’t feel much like it as he awoke in a hospital wing with wires and needles and bleepity bleeps all around him. He recognized the smell from Trauma after earlier missions and knew he was, somehow, at the Commission headquarter. He sat up, drowsily, squinting around to try and locate anyone he could strangle some information out of. 

Then there was like a jolt of electricity went through his mind at the moment he noticed the absence of movements inside him. He threw a glare down to realise the bump he’d been lobbing around the last 42 weeks was entirely gone. 

The last moments before he passed out came rushing over him in violent flashbacks and he whimpered as he scrambled out of bed on shaky feet. He had lost Allison, and somewhere lost in time was now Vanya and Luther!

He had no idea as to how he managed to stumble his way to the Suitcase Room, discreetly dragging an IV- stand along with him where a bag of blood was slowly being administered to his body through an IV inserted into a vein in his right arm. A guard, placed by a desk in front of the entrance looked up in bepusslement as he tried to stroll by him quite casually.

“I’m sorry young man, but where do you think you’re going?” he asked Five as he tried to put his hand on the doorknob and missed. He reckoned he wasn’t all charged up yet..

“I’m going inside that room to fetch a suitcase, and I will kill you if you try to stop me,” Five told him calmly, peering as he realised he now saw two identical guards.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” the guard told him and rose to his feet. Five rolled his eyes and whacked him over the head with the IV- stand, and, by dumb luck, actually knocked him out. Panic hastening his steps he ripped the door open and threw himself at the first and best suitcase just as he heard the tiny voice of Herb squealing through the hallways.

“Five, don’t do this, you need to rest!” But he vanished in a wave of white before Herb was anywhere near the Suitcase Room.

When Five dropped down to the library he was met by the bewildered looks of Diego and Klaus, both armed like a small army.

“Five?! What the hell?!” Diego shrieked as Five stumbled out on the floor, complete with hospital gown and IV- stand. 

“What are you doing here, you look like you need to be in a hospital bed!” Klaus urged and ran to his aid to steady him. Five shook his head drowsily. 

“No time, need to find Vanya and Luther. I think they’re in Sweden sometime, perhaps in 1976!” He stumbled around on the floor for a little while, looking pretty deranged as he seemed to be doing some internal calculations. Then he stopped, face sagging as he started to sob.

“I lost her, I lost Allison..” He dropped to his knees with a suppressed moan. Diego and Klaus exchanged bewildered looks and Klaus rushed to his side.

“Allison is alive and well, Five. And so are Vanya and Luther.” 

Five was now hiding his face between his arms and knees, looking like he was steadying himself for a plummet down from the skies in an airplane. He was slowly rocking from side to side, apparently lost to everything and anything around him. Klaus grabbed his arms and shook him carefully.

“Five!” Klaus waited patiently until Five finally looked up at him as in a daze. He waited until his eyes found his and smiled at him, as he told him once more, with eyes brimming with tears:

“Allison is alive and well, and so are Vanya and Luther. They are here, Five, all of them!” Five’s mouth dropped, and the blank look on his face was priceless. 

“She’s alive? They.. are here? All of them?” he croaked.

“You did it, little brother, you brought them home!” Klaus murmured. 

Five did something completely out of character, he dived in for a hug. 

\-----

Five was in a state, to say the least. Barely stitched up from some helluva trauma, not even letting a current ongoing blood transfusion stop him from hitting the floor with both feet running. Or.. maybe not running, more like limping. But where he found the stamina to do even that was uncanny! Diego watched in secret marvel as he witnessed Five haul himself up the stairs, ordering Klaus to carry his IV- stand like it was his Prada bag or something. 

Five was the first to reach Vanya’s room, closely followed by Klaus, IV- rack and Diego. Both Vanya and Luther were seated at Vanya’s bed, with Luther cradling something in his big arms. The big chimp was practically beaming, looking down on baby Allison who’s tiny arms were flailing in the air towards his nose. .

“Where is she?!” Five croaked as he tumbled inside the room, arms and legs all over the place as he was in habit of when he was in a hurry. There was a look of raw hope and fear in his eyes, as he searched the room.

“She’s right here, Five,” Luther told him, a sweet smile swelling on his face as he watched the battered frame of his brother limp towards him.

Vanya moved away from the bed so that Five could sit, and they all watched in silence as Luther, quite unclumsilly, transferred the baby over to Five’s shivering arms. He was peering down on her for a long time with lips parted in silent awe, and she was squinting back at him. Then she made a tiny noise, the squeaky kind of noise babies sometimes make, and Five’s face erupted into an affectionate smile that reached every corner of his face, from his dimples to the crooks of his eyes.

“Allison!” he whispered, kissing her forehead lightly, touching one of her tiny hands. Then he seemed to get self conscious and straightened his back and face some. But the smile lingered on, and so did the gentle grace radiating from him. 

“Well done, little guy, you brought her home to us,” Luther murmured and put his arm around Five’s frail frame. 

The peace, quiet and serenity lasted for exactly five minutes. Then there was the unmistakable noise of another briefcase entering the Hargreeves mansion.

“We should really start considering making a helipad for this place,” Klaus groaned as he stepped aside just in time before Herb materialized into the room. Luther could feel Five tense up in the moment Herb tilted his hat to greet them all.

“Hello all,” he chirped, eyes resting steadily on Five and the baby now clutched protectively towards his chest.

“Not to worry, old chap. I’m not here to claim your sister. I’m here to beckon you to return to the hospital for a few days to heal up. You’ve been through quite the ordeal you know..” He took a few steps towards the bed, but stopped as Five had a look on him like he was about to jump through the window.

“Can I have a talk with Five, alone?” Herb asked, and gestured to the room.

Luther scowled back at him.

“The last time you did that Five and Vanya disappeared to 1979!” Herb jerked his shoulders in agreement.

“You can look after the briefcase and Allison while we talk. If it’s alright by you, Five?” They all turned to look at Five, who quite honestly looked a drained out mess. He seemed to be weighing his options back and forth for a moment, then silently moved Allison over to Luther’s arm and sealed the deal with a silent nod aimed at Herb. The siblings exited the room, with Diego throwing daggers at Herb’s direction.

“Don’t try anything funny! We’ll be right outside, Fivey!”

Herb waited until Vanya closed the door behind them and went over to the bed where Five was waiting in silence and baited breath.

“I think a congratulation is in order,” he mused as he sat down, laying his hat beside him.

“You handled this mission exceedingly well, and the outcome was exactly as the Commission was hoping for.”

Five kept silent, but his mind was racing.

“While your part in this played out, the Commission was able to flush out the turncoat in the agency, and furthermore unraveling the entire Dark Horse Organisation. I’m happy to say the most ardent threat to the timeline as of this day has been struck down.”

“Where does that leave Allison, or my family?” Five muttered.

“Allison, and your family is safe, Five. There will be no more threats to you as far as this part of the timeline is considered. What kind of shenanigans you will be up to in the future.. well that’s an entirely other story. But, alas, nothing is yet set in stone, old chap. Allison’s role in the future will still stand as an important turnpoint, and I’m sure that she, and her family, will be up to it.” There was a wink in his eye as he said it, a small hint of latent boyish charm radiating from the old man.

Five twiddled his thumbs for a while until he broke the silence. 

“You probably know already what I’m up to.”

“Of course I do,” Herb answered, still with a hint of amusement in his voice:” And I can help you find her.”

“Will it work?”

“It is one of your more creative ideas, I’ll grant you that,” Herb chuckled: “All I can say is that the timeline is unfolding as the Commission needs it to.”

“That’s not an answer to my question at all,” Five sighed and ran his palms tiredly down his thighs. He was starting to show further signs of weariness. 

“You’re tuckered out. Why don’t you come back to the hospital wing with me, rest your feet for a couple of days. You’ve earned it,” Herb suggested, as he hobbled to his feet. Five had a drowsy look in his eyes, but he still met his gaze with stern determination.

“I’ve earned the right to rest right here, with my family.” 

“Right you are,” Herb nodded in agreement. As he picked up his hat he handed Five a small envelope.

“Here’s instructions on how to find her. I suggest you take Diego with you. But wait a couple of weeks. You need to rest, and Allison needs to settle into her new self and her new awareness before she is able to latch on to and connect with her powers.”

As he was heading for the door Herb stopped and turned around, looking at Five one last time, this time with something that looked curiously like newfound respect in his face. 

“You’re quite the conundrum, Master Hargreeves!” Then he turned and opened the door where the three remaining Hargreeves brothers came tumbling inside the room on top of each other.

“Thank you all for your patience, gentlemen, and ladies.” He tipped his hat and reached out his arm: “May I have my briefcase back?”

Diego shot a look at Five who gave a nod back, before he handed it over.

“Next time, call beforehand!” he grumbled, as Herb vanished in a flash.

Vanya entered the room, stepping over Klaus who was still flailing around on the floor, and went over to Five who was still slumped in some sort of sitting position. 

“I think I will sleep now,” Five mumbled, already looking half asleep. “Better find my bed..”

“You’re not going anywhere, mister,”Vanya told him, and cupped his cheek with her free hand. You’re taking my bed. And while you sleep we’ll take care of Allison.”

“But what about food?” Luther suddenly chimed in: “Won’t she be needing Five for… you know..” he gestured awkwardly towards Five’s chest. Five, one foot already into sleepyland needed a moment or ten before he understood what Luther insinuated. His face scrunched up in revulsion.

“What the hell, Luther, do I look like I have boobs?!”

Luther, looking like he had stepped on a landmine and now slowly was trying to step away from it without setting it off started flailing his arms again:

“Well, you sort of suddenly had the other plumbing, so I thought maybe..”

“I’m not breastfeeding my sister, Luther! Jeez!!” Five howled and threw himself under the covers.

“Alright, alright, just checking.” Luther answered, rubbing his neck in embarrassment “ I’ll just pop out and buy some formula then.


	19. Oh, Baby!

While Five slept for what seemed like a decade, the rest of the Hargreeves siblings tried to settle into a new state of living with baby Allison as a curious addition to the household. Vanya had secretly prepared most of the babystuff their sister would need for the first few weeks. There were plenty of rooms to choose from in the mansion so it was easy to prepare a room for a baby’s arrival without stirring too much attention. 

She had wisely rejected Klaus’ eager suggestions of throwing Five a babyshower earlier in December. She could all too well picture Five having a fit if he was to enter a room all covered in pink, with diaper cakes, tiny baby clothes, cute pink food and whatnot. So she prepared for Allison’s arrival in silence, as she did best. Buying a little at a time, smuggling the bigger items in when she knew Five was asleep or hiding in his room in a feeble attempt at getting some time away from his curious brothers. His temper hadn’t exactly been of the joyant kind in december, stressed out with the upcoming birth, and the whole “Dark Horse”- situation he had kept from them. Vanya wasn’t sure anyone could have demanded anything more of him after what he’d been through the last year.

Therefore she let him sleep, brought him warm chicken soup the moments he woke to answer the call of nature, so to speak, and she lingered in his presence when he wanted her to. He seemed dog tired, and mostly kept in Allison’s room. A nurse sent by the Commission tried to make him a housecall a couple of days after his return to the mansion, but she was seen exciting his room in tears. Apparently Five wasn’t having anyone examining him or making sure he was alright. So Vanya lingered, always close by, but not to close. She knew Five needed the space. 

Allison was a trooper of a baby. She ate, slept and pooped. Vanya suspected her now baby sister was having a hard time adapting to her new form of existence. There were moments looking into her eyes she could have sworn Allison was trying to communicate with her, and Klaus confirmed her suspicions one night when he was feeding her.

“I know, munchkin. It’s hard to speak when you don’t have the words.”

Vanya looked over at them from her spot on the sofa.

“Are you still able to emote with her?”

“Not as much, it’s like there’s a veil between us. I can feel her trying, though, and she is super frustrated with herself. Yes, you are, Alliewallie, yes you are!” he cooed into the face of a suddenly wailing baby.

“Maybe we should refrain from calling her Alliewallie, at least..?” Vanya suggested.

“But you’re so cute, I must give you childish nicknames tiny sister!” Klaus squealed and butted noses with the now raging baby in his lap.Vanya choked a sigh and held out her arms towards them.

“Here, let me,” she told Klaus calmly. Klaus was happy to hand Allison over all the while she was wailing bloody murder, but was instantly insulted when Allison went silent the moment she was back in Vanya’s arms. 

“You using your force on her or something?” Klaus was squinting suspiciously. 

“Yes, I resonate to the sound of her crying and tell her to shut up or I’ll blow her up..!” Vanya replied dryly.

“OOooh, listen to Vanya!” Klaus cheered. “Upping your snark- game, sister?”

“Yeah, spending time with Five tends to have that effect on me,” Vanya smiled with just a hint of sarcasm lingering in her voice.

“Well, thank god I’m good for something around here,” a voice suddenly replied from the doorway. There was Five. Pale and sallow- skinned, bags under his eyes, moving like an eighty year old man in a now baggy pajama. He shuffled his way over to where they were seated and he very, very gingerly sat down and leaned back to rest his head against the back of the sofa.Vanya watched him make eye contact with Allison, who was suddenly very focused, small arms thrashing in the air in front of her as she stared directly at him.

“Hi there, Allison.” Five’s voice was soft, as were his face as he watched his sister buckle in Vanya’s arms.

“I think she wants you to take her,” Vanya smiled. She leaned over and settled the baby in Five’s arms. He looked like he was on the verge of being knocked over by a feather, but his arms wrapped protectively around Allison and he held her tight to his chest as he was peering down on her with a fixed gaze.

“I know this is all new and scary for you,” he murmured to the baby: “It’s scary for me too.” Allison opened her mouth and her small hands, now rolled into fists, were practically vibrating with energy.

“I have a plan, but you need to grow a bit first and get used to your new body.” Allison gurgled in reply.

“You think you can hold on a couple of weeks for me?” he asked her, a tender tone in his voice Vanya had never heard from him before. Allison started flailing her arms again, eyes still eagerly fixed upon her brother.

“Good girl,” Five smiled and kissed her forehead. 

“What’s the plan?” Vanya asked him as she watched Allison yawn and settle into Five’s arms.

“All in good time,” Five answered her with a crooked smile. “First Allison and I need to recuperate a little, and then I will set the plan into motion.”

“Will it work?” Klaus chimed in.

Five gave booth Vanya and Klaus a long silent scowl and hesitated a little too long before he answered him.

“It has to.”

To portray Five as exhausted after the last 44 weeks was an understatement. There wasn’t a bone in his body that wasn’t aching after the last stretch of his predicament. In the days after the birth he had silently hoped his dick would magically reappear somehow, but he seemed to be stuck with his now forever marred vagina. A nurse had appeared a couple of days after Allison had reentered the world, a sign of Herb’s good grace of course, set on the task of making sure Five was healing properly. She was a sturdy lady, with a firm set of hands, but he picked out her weaknesses easy enough and sent her bawling out the door. He was done with his body being a spectacle and ogling and prodding. 

The space and privacy he had so desperately craved the last year was now within his grasp, and he needed time to sleep, to reset and recharge. There was one last big mission left of this storyline, and for it to work the timing had to be right and he had to be fit enough for a fight.


	20. Lila

Ronnie and Anita Gill were flower merchants, living a simple but fulfilling life in east London with their four year old daughter, Lila. Anyone who knew them had nice things to say about them, and they were seen as friendly, humble and ordinary. Their little girl was a charming child with big brown eyes and a heartwarming laugh, adorable dimples and a cheeky smile. A happy family of three, with a fourth member on the way. 

The sonogram showed a little boy, set to enter the world in about five months time. The little one was a well kept secret for the time being. Anita was planning to reveal the news to his husband during dinner that night.

  


That night just so happened to be the same night a stranger broke into their home, hogtied Anita and Ronnie and shot them dead. Lila escaped, hiding in her secret little cottage, the cheeky monkey cage as her father called it. It was a small cabinet hidden in the wall, used for storing illegal merchandise during the second world war. Lila used it as her secret playroom, and as a hiding space when it was time to go to bed. This night was no different, her mom had called for bedtime, and she had hidden away, chuckling while waiting for her mom to reveal where she had gone, just as she did every night. 

  


But this night proved different. This night ended her happy life together with a mom and dad, the smell of flowers and a brother that was never going to be born. In the years after all she would remember from that night was her mom’s cries, the smell of blood and gunpowder and the utter silence of her parents' murderer. 

  


\------

  


She was back in the old neighborhood where she spent her four years as a happy child. A childhood cut short by the order of the Handler and by the hand of Five Hargreeves.

At first her thought was to travel back to 1993 just to get a glimpse of her parents and to have a look at the little flower store they ran on the corner of Stratford. But as her eye lingered her heart grew greedy. She painted pictures in her mind about growing up with her parents, living a normal, boring mundane life. She fantasized about going to school and going into the flower business herself, like her parents. She would die of boredom, of course, flowers being about as exciting as wiping floors at the local Burger joint, but in her fantasy she was a kickass flower merchant, and an assassin on the side. Lila was sometimes pondering where her parents imprint ended and The Handler’s began, but she had a sneaking suspicion that the murderous part came after her first years in East London.

  


With the power of a suitcase at her hand she could feel herself itching to simply step back in time and place a bullet inside Five’s skull before he had the chance to enter her parents’ flat that fateful night. What would become of her life if she cut short the life of her parents’ murderer? What impact would it have on her life and her future?

  


The itch to find out grew stronger for each passing day, and the date for her parents’ murder slowly grew closer while she stayed on close by. She cherished the fantasy of placing a bullet right between Five’s eyes, to watch his surprise as he was overpowered and surprised by someone he saw as inferior to him. The snot nosed, wiseass little shitbag wouldn’t know what hit him. And her parents would be safe, and little Lila would grow up without a worry in the world.

  


Except.. Although fantasies are nice, reality seldom plays out as you wish. Lila figured as much as with Five wiped out of the way, others would come for her and her parents. The Handler was set on having her as her own little pet. But if she snuffed out the Handler as well, the woman she had grown up with and had regarded as her mother, she might just get her silver lining ending..

  


Gone would be the years of training as an temps agent assassin, gone would be the former lovers, hits and.. Diego. 

  


  


Five days until crunchtime. She could use her suitcase and jump forwards of course, but somehow she wanted to savour the wait, bask upon the feeling of impending judgement on those who took her childhood away. She kept to a small sidewalk cafe, opposite her parents’ flowershop, watching them from afar, but still close enough to get small glimpses of them now and again.

  


Late afternoon she was sipping a latte while chewing on her straw and dreaming about how marvelous her new life would become.

  


“Long time, no see, crazy lady.” That voice, the stuck up little tone and the gnarly american accent. Lila didn’t need to turn her head to recognize the boyman it belonged to.

  


“Five.” She turned and gave a smile that never reached her eyes. To her horror she discovered Diego was there too, a weird mix of beaming joy and sulky grumpiness radiating off him.

  


“Wow, small world. Imagine bumping into you, here!” Five’s smile was as heartily as a shark. He looked like crap though, like he was down with the plague or something.

  


“You’ve grown, Five. Not for the better I might add,” Lila replied with salty sweetness and beckoned for both her nemesis and ex to sit down. Four years had passed since she grabbed the suitcase and ran from that barn in Dallas. Diego had declared his love, or brotherhood to her, she wasn’t really sure, it was all a jumble of emotions and weird double messages that day. The revelation that she was one of them, a sister, not in blood, but in powers floored her and liberated her at the same time. She was free of the Handler, she was free of any feelings of guilt of all the bad things she had done in her name.

  


“You look like shit,” she told Five, and watched his brow furrow in irritation. Good, he was still as easy to agitate. 

  


“Leave him be, he’s been through a lot lately.” Diego was ruffling his feathers, defending his brother, and Lila had to smile as she watched Five loathe being protected by his brother.

  


“So, I’ll cut this short for you, as it seems Five is about to faint or die, or something. You’re here to stop me from stopping the old shitbag version of you from murdering my parents. You’re not stopping me. I’ll go back in time, time and time again until I get it right. At this Five smiled and hoisted up a suitcase he was carrying with him, her suitcase.

  


“Oh, but wouldn’t you need this old thing?” A cheeky smile grew on his cheeks as he tilted the suitcase to an angle that revealed light streaming through a very real bullethole piercing through its midst.

  


_You filthy little.._

  


She held her breath, steeled herself and plastered a grin on her face. 

  


_I’ll just steal your talents then, you footstool!_

  


She tapped into her force, the one who could allow her to borrow any talent of the “special seven” in her immediate presence, and homed in on Five, who just sat there, still smirking as if he had a curveball to throw. After a few seconds she figured it out. He was weakened, unable to time jump. There was enough juice for some spatial jumps, but that was all. This infuriated her. His weakened state, it was all a part of the play for him. And Diego’s talent was, well useless for her right now. The talent to flinch anything thrown at her would be handy for dropping them when she was fed up, but as for her immediate needs it was worth bull. Sure, she would make sure Five would drop dead if she decided to toss anything at him, but she wanted to save the killing for the version of Five with a mustache.

  


“We’re not here to stop you from saving your parents,” Five said, calmly, ordering a coffee, black, at the same time with a few waves at the barista in the corner. She watched him with poorly hidden disgust as she tried to figure out what angle Five was working.

  


“Sure. You just happen to be here today, five days prior to my parents’ murder and you expect me to believe that? You’ll cease to exist after that.” She sipped at her straw, knowing full well the sound was making Five cringe.

  


“We won’t stop you, the Commission will,” Five answered. “This is one of their fixed storylines, noone is allowed to tamper with it. They have executives working on it right now, agents watching you, ready to step in at a moment’s notice. You will never place that bullet in my skull in this timeline. 

  


Lila’s mind backflipped. Caught up in her murderous revenge rage she hadn’t taken the Commission into account. Five’s case, furiously, added up.

  


“So, why are you here?” Lila kept her voice innocent and curious, playing with the straw and biting her lip while she watched Diego starting to sweat.

  


“We need you to come with us.” It was a demand not a request. Cocky little Five might not look his best, but the attitude never lingered with the little snake.

  


“Oh, so you do, do you?”

  


“We’ll make it worth your while,” Diego chimed in, squirming in his seat. 

  


“Hey, it talks!” Lila threw Diego a big smirk and watched him shrink.

  


“If you come with us willingly we’ll give you a new suitcase afterwards.” Five was all business, the little squirt. He was rocking his little uniform, complete with kneesocks and wolly shorts that made him look like a stuck up brat from a private school.

  


“Then I’ll just go back here and kill you,” Lila smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

  


“Yes, and then some Commission agent will kill you first and I’m rid of you,” Five smirked back with triumphant glee.

  


“And what, if you mind me asking, is it I’m supposed to do for you?” Lila did a good job at keeping her irritation at bay, but she knew Five was no dumbass.

  


“We need to borrow your powers, temporarily.” Five leaned forward, interlocking his fingers, now all business in his eyes.

  


“Allison needs our help, and we need your help to tap into her powers.” 

  


“So what, she is in a coma or something?” Lila was struggling to see where this was going. Why on earth would they need her help to tap into Allison’s “inner voice”- thing? Diego opened his mouth to say something, but Five abruptly cut him off.

  


“If you come with us, you’ll see,” Five answered. 

  


He was unsure of her answer. Lila could read Five like an open book. He was looking really antsy, like he was fearing she would run away if she got the chance. And she could if she would. Losing Five in his weakened state was to battle a kitten, and Diego was still too head over heals about her to stake her any real danger. But curiosity always got the better of her, and she was really intrigued at what could possibly force Five’s hand so much that he had to come crawling to her for help. This had to be juicy to say the least. And if she decided to join them there was nothing binding her to her word to this family, and especially not to Five Hargreeves. She could split anytime she wanted to. But although she was willing to come with them she wasn’t going to let Five get her for cheap.

  


“Fine, I’ll come with you, but on one condition,” Lila answered, a smug smile growing dangerously over her face. Five looked like he knew shit was coming his way


End file.
